This afternoon, GW law professor (and Concurring Opinions blogger) Daniel Solove will be delivering a lecture on ““The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet” at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law. The talk, which is sponsored by the Center for Law, Technology, and the Arts, will build upon the themes of Solove’s recent book of the same name. Here’s a brief description of the talk:
What information about you is available on the Internet? What if it’s wrong, humiliating, or true but regrettable? Will it ever go away?
Teeming with chatrooms, online discussion groups, and blogs, the Internet offers previously unimagined opportunities for personal expression and communication. But there’s a dark side to the story. A trail of information fragments about us is forever preserved on the Internet: a chronicle of our private lives—often of dubious reliability and sometimes totally false—instantly accessible to friends, strangers, dates, employers, neighbors, relatives, and anyone else who cares to look.
Focusing on blogs, Internet communities, cyber mobs, and other current trends, Professor Solove will explore the profound implications of the online collision between free speech and privacy as he offers a fascinating account of how the Internet is transforming gossip, the way we shame others, and our ability to protect our own reputations.
Longstanding notions of privacy need review, and unless we establish a balance among privacy, free speech, and anonymity, we may discover that the freedom of the Internet makes us less free.
The event will be webcast live. Details here.