Danielle Citron writes: The video rental business is among a few sectors of the U.S. economy with strong federal limits on the collection and sharing of consumer data. Under the Video Privacy Protection Act, which was passed in 1988, “video tape service providers” generally are not permitted to share a consumer’s video usage information without…
Category: Laws
Copyright and Your Face
A terrific post by Derek Bambauer on PrawfsBlawg begins: The Federal Trade Commission recently held a workshop on facial recognition technology, such as Facebook’s much-hated system, and its privacy implications. The FTC has promised to come down hard on companies who abuse these capabilities, but privacy advocates are seeking even stronger protections. One proposal raised was to provide people with copyright in…
When Computer Misuse Becomes a Crime
Ginny LaRoe has a helpful article on the upcoming rehearing en banc of United States v. Nosal , a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals case that asks whether violating an employer’s computer use policy is a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a law that started life as an anti-hacking statute. A few…
Information Regulation that Hasn’t Worked
Jim Harper writes: When Senator William Proxmire (D-WI) proposed and passed the Fair Credit Reporting Act forty years ago, he almost certainly believed that the law would fix the problems he cited in introducing it. It hasn’t. The bulk of the difficulties he saw in credit reporting still exist today, at least to hear consumer…