A marathon debate today in the House of Representatives on the Stop Online Piracy Act wasn't derailed by procedural questions, even though not one hearing had been held on how the law would actually work.
It wasn't derailed by questions about SOPA's substance, even though legal scholars and technologists have said it could suppress free speech by virtually deleting Web sites accused of copyright infringement.
Instead, today's markup of SOPA in the House Judiciary committee was derailed by a snarky post on Twitter. (See CNET's FAQ on SOPA.)
The tweet in question came from Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), a pro-gun, anti-abortion conservative who wrote that: "We are debating the Stop Online Piracy Act and Shiela Jackson [sic] has so bored me that I'm killing time by surfing the Internet." Read More!
Privacy In Social Media...Is It Really An Oxymoron?
Yes, privacy in social media is pretty close to an oxymoron. At least in U.S. privacy law, the key issue for determining whether one has a privacy right is whether there was a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in the circumstances. And the circumstances of social media, for the most part, suggest no such reasonable expectation, for the simple reason that social media posts (a) are initially made available to multiple persons (b) on a medium which facilitates and even encourages their dissemination to many more.
A recent court decision, Chaney v. Fayette County Public School District, involving very sympathetic facts on the side of the young woman asserting the privacy claim, demonstrates the problem. The case involved a high school student in Fayette County, Georgia. She had posted on her Facebook page a photo of herself, taken on a family vacation, showing her in a bikini next to a life-size cutout of the rapper Snoop Dog.
The 17-year-old student, Chelsea Chaney, set her Facebook page to a semi-private setting, allowing only her Facebook friends and friends of friends to view the page. The court characterized the setting as "inclusive" because it was the broadest setting allowed for a minor. But many Facebook users might view this as a fairly restrictive setting, because it limits viewership only to friends and their connections.Read More!
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