Unfortunately, depending on your jurisdiction, it is quite likely that the definition of "public" (or whatever similar term your legal system uses) is actually based on observability from a public place, not on whether the object of the observation is actually on public property themselves. Thus we see things like Google's Street View cameras getting away with peering into rooms in homes or looking over fences, or paparazzi flying around celebrity homes in helicopters, carrying cameras with huge telephoto lenses. In some places, such behaviours have been deemed inappopriate, and services like Street View have suffered the consequences, but I wouldn't say that was the norm by any means.
Also, just as an aside, I think only one of my previous examples relates specifically to observing someone who is themselves on private property anyway. The others can and do happen in public places, they're just not observations that a typical person going about their normal daily lives would be able to make. The latter might be a better benchmark when we consider terms like "reasonable expectation of privacy", but again it is certainly open to debate whether the law in most places would take that view.
See also numerous recent stories of government here in the UK facing criticism for installing CCTV cameras outside people's bedroom windows, putting people through virtual strip search machines at airports, etc. Sensitive images have subsequently leaked that would not have been observable by a regular passer-by, even though they were taken from a public place, because they required the use of specific technology to collect.
Perhaps, but how you came to find it out and who you shared it with are often under your control. We don't (yet) have the ability to selectively erase people's memories, but we certainly can punish undesirable behaviour, such as collecting information by going around spying on someone, or betraying a confidence by sharing with the whole world some sensitive information you were given privately.
In any case, most of the serious problems in this area are not about what an individual person knows, but about what an organisation "knows". Organisations can be large and disproportionately powerful compared to individuals, and it is necessary to rebalance their relative strength to prevent abuse of individual rights and freedoms.
In the particular case of corporations, we are always talking about an artificial legal entity that is granted a certain status in law because we consider it useful in society to do so. Such corporations should be afforded only such rights and freedoms as continue to benefit society. We can restrict their behaviour as much as we feel like, up to and including eliminating them completely, if it is in the best interests of our society to do so.
A photo taken in a public park is not "owned" by anyone. The light bouncing off your body is the common property of all.
Really? Even if it's taken with a telephoto lens, looking over your shoulder to capture you entering a PIN while making a card payment? Even if it's taken up a girl's skirt using a concealed camera in a low-carry bag? Even it uses new technology to render intimate images of someone that could not be seen with the naked eye? What about driving up to your home on a public road, raising a camera on a robot arm right up to a little gap you left in the curtains of each bedroom window, and snapping intimate photos of everyone in your family getting changed? And what about video? If a video is just a series of photos, and photographing anything in a public place is acceptable, can someone just follow you around all day, standing two feet behind you with a camcorder, and then publish a daily journal of your entire life every time you leave your home?
One of the biggest problems with this sort of debate is the assumption that absolute rules like "If you're in a public place, anything goes" are still worth anything. Modern technology is rapidly changing what is possible, and it is far from clear that all uses of that technology are good things. What is a public place, anyway? The implications of old definitions based on where the general public could access or where the general public could observe are completely different with modern technology providing many opportunities that would technically fit those criteria but that certainly aren't in the original spirit of the rule.
single records made by an individual who is physically present and visible themselves for private use and available only via direct personal contact, and
millions of records held and exploited by a commercial organisation by making them available without exercising editorial control to large numbers of possibly unidentified people in a searchable database with direct, near-instantaneousworldwide access.
Well, actually, that's more than half a dozen significant, objective differences.
This is obviously not a black and white issue, particularly if the kind of data we're talking about is photos. In a photo, an individual can be the main focus, not the main focus but clearly identifiable, or simply in the background. Moreover, photos might show public places, where it seems reasonable to assume you may be observed casually to some extent. The more interesting questions revolve around what expectations of privacy are fair and should be enforceable in a world where it's no longer just the other people you pass in the street who can see you, but you can also be systematically observed and recorded.
I doubt an alternative as extreme as giving everyone a power of veto over any record they ever appeared in in any form would be desirable even if it were practical. But the current situation is widely abused, and it does cause a lot of background unpleasantness for a lot of people, and it does cause very serious problems for an unlucky few (whose numbers are fast increasing). Something Must Be Done(TM).
In the age of the Internet, we have businesses like Google and Facebook who on the one hand provide services that many people find useful but on the other hand have practically built a business model around invading privacy in ways not everyone (including those who don't use their services) wants to accept. It is certainly fair to consider whether our historical assumptions in terms of privacy are still valid today, and whether we need to update our ideas about what we do and don't allow such organisations to do, rather than just assuming that if modern technology allows a certain behaviour (and even if a lot of people want that behaviour) we should permit it without question.
I don't mind that. If fully informed and rational adults are willing to give up some privacy in exchange for some convenience, who am I to tell them they may not do so?
The sad thing, to me, is that the trend in recent years has been for corporations to just decide for us that everyone is like that, and act accordingly, because it makes them more money and privacy laws are so weak in most places that there has been nothing to stop the rot. Not everyone is happy for that sort of thing to happen.
Also, not everyone is mature enough and sufficiently aware of the facts to make an informed and rational decision. Those who are not include children, adults with learning disabilities, and non-technical/legal people who simply don't realise the implications of uploading data that they think only their "friends" can see.
Once again we agree on the principle, but once again I suspect we really could support your "very high" burden of proof in this case. If the media reporting is at all accurate, it seems we're not talking about someone stabbing someone else because they once saw a reference to how bad the other person was in a movie. Rather, we seem to be talking about someone who has been actively advocating doing bad things for a long time, and a perpetrator who had spent a lot of time watching videos of that particular advocate and who pointed straight at him when asked why she did it.
Doesn't it make more sense to actually target the people who sent the British Military to Afghanistan, rather than innocent civilians?
So your question is, if I wanted to try to kill someone because I was angry about a political decision, would it be more ethical to stab an MP than a member of the general public?
Have you stopped beating your wife yet?
It's politicians that make the decisions that get people killed and maimed but don't really put themselves in danger. Politicians are reckless with peoples lives, while making sure they are living comfortably and safe.
Perhaps. However, given the amount of dubious reporting and the kind of "intelligence" that we now know was being circulated even at Parliament level at the time, I'm not convinced any MPs not in Blair's inner circle really had a chance to make a properly informed decision. I'm hesitant to blame any MP who voted for the war if they were being misled about the facts. In short, I don't think it's fair to assign collective responsibility if it wasn't really a collective decision at all. If anyone is going to be held accountable for the war, it should be those who were really behind the decision to enter it.
Be fair. Technically they do have freedom of speech...
Not really. Things like defamation or incitement to murder are still illegal pretty much everywhere. I suspect that the line where speech crosses into illegality is further over in somewhere like the US where there is a certain social weight placed on freedom of speech, but it's still not an absolute.
I'd say the more preferable position is to err on the side of being permissive.
On that we agree entirely: we should always give the benefit of the doubt to freedom, and restrict freedoms by law only with a clear reason for doing so. (See my sig...) I just think that if we're actually at the point where a serving representative can almost be killed while doing their duty, by someone who has clearly lost the plot after being bombarded by hateful propaganda, we're rather past the "benefit of the doubt" stage.
There is a liberal tendency around these parts to pretend that external influences do not affect individual actions. You can see it very clearly in other contexts too. For example, watch what happens on Slashdot if anyone gets within a mile of suggesting a connection between spending all day playing realistic, violent video games and becoming more aggressive in real life.
While it might make people feel warm and fuzzy to believe that there is no connection between harmful behaviour and external influences relating to it, and that the bad behaviour is all entirely down to individual free will, that is so obviously untrue in the face of real world experience that beyond a certain point it just sounds like trying to justify the unjustifiable because they don't like the conclusion they will be forced to draw otherwise. As I said elsewhere in this thread, if you don't believe external influence affects people's judgement, just ask the advertising industry.
This is a totally black and white issue. The US is not subject to censorship by any foreign nation. Period. The reasons don't matter.
In which case, the US is harbouring those who wish to kill our political leaders, which is clearly an act of war. Maybe we should start dropping nuclear bombs on you? Oh, no, wait, black and white arguments are usually stupidly extreme and not how civilised nations deal with real problems if they actually want to solve them.
More on topic, why should an MP not face the same dangers that they have created for the general population?
I don't follow. The MP was attacked during a constituency surgery, supposedly while there to meet constituents to hear their concerns. In what was is the danger of being attacked in that context as a result of an action he took in his official capacity something that would also apply to the general population?
(a) This is not a black-and-white issue, but the idea that people are completely immune to any external influence and therefore those who attempt to cause results indirectly should not be held at all responsible is crazy to me. Just ask advertisers.
(b) This very nearly was a murder. The MP concerned was seriously injured.
Unfortunately, your approach allows some very nasty people to literally get away with murder. All they have to do is make sure someone else pulls the trigger and let them take the fall. I don't think such a simplistic approach is compatible with justice in any useful sense of the term.
No, you don't. You have freedom of speech when it suits your authorities to permit it, and then only until someone has brought a civil action against you under any of various other laws that limit your right to exercise that "freedom". To my knowledge, there is no country on the planet the provides an absolute protection for freedom of speech in law, and there are good reasons for that.
Odd, I'm British and I haven't noticed any government cameras in my house. Or on the road outside it for that matter. Maybe they're just very well hidden.
Well, if you live in Birmingham, that might well be true.
This is the sort of thing that gets on my nerves. I am all for defending freedoms, but freedom must be exercised responsibly.
This is a case where a Member of Parliament -- roughly the counterpart of your Representatives in the US -- was attacked and nearly died, while performing his fundamental constitutional duty to meet a member of his constituency supposedly to hear her concerns. Your President walks around protected by the most high profile private army in the world because of that sort of threat, and the danger it poses to the effective functioning of government.
There is nothing responsible about such attacks, nor about advocating them. At some point, the MP's right to do his job safely outweighs someone else's right to freely advocate harming him, and if you get to the point where someone is getting stabbed then you have gone waaaaay over that line.
I don't know how to answer the questions properly in a single post on a forum like this. You could write entire books on the subject of what privacy really means in an age of fast-evolving technology, what real dangers arise if it is given up or taken away, what "dangers" are more fear than reality, and so on.
One thing that is clear is that once privacy is lost, it is very hard and sometimes impossible to truly recover it. Thus the penalties for invasion of privacy in the first place must be a strong deterrent. Also, the kinds of rulings courts can make in terms of injunctions and/or financial awards need to support practical steps that can be taken to limit the damage from an invasion of privacy, even if taking those steps is far more expensive than any direct financial loss suffered by the victim.
However, right now, if the authorities do anything to an infringer at all, it tends to be fining them a token amount for an invasion in a civil court or announcing publicly that they are naughty at the end of a regulator-led action several years after the fact. This isn't a deterrent, it's a joke for the boardroom coffee break.
Instead, we should be fining businesses some staggering proportion of their annual income in a civil court and/or making the directors/officers personally liable for the inappropriate behaviour of their organisations as they would be in certain other cases and then bringing criminal charges against them accordingly. Basically, the response needs to be on an entirely different scale to what we have today.
Until we see that sort of shift, powerful organisations like multinational corporations and government departments aren't going to care, because the penalty is only money and only pocket change at that. Meanwhile, the unlucky guy in the street whose life gets screwed up is going to be the only one suffering any real damage when privacy is invaded.
What is the value of your privacy? How do you quantify the damage caused by loss of said privacy?
This is the problem with lawsuits that try to reduce everything to dollar amounts. That might be an objective measure in some sense, but the value of the most important things in life is rarely measured in cash, and often compensation for losing them can't be measured in cash either.
Since when was IE9 actually launched? Are we seriously predicting the doom of IE because not so many people downloaded a browser that isn't even released yet?
There are legitimate concerns for web developers about how widely IE9 will be adopted, not least the operating systems it will run on (or not), but for goodness' sake, this whole story is just premature.
I think the big difference in most of the cases you mentioned is that there is some sort of objective test, potentially an automatic one, that could be applied. Things get more difficult when you get into subjective issues, which is why we have courts in the first place. Courts can be expensive and time-consuming, which is why we have less formal but still independent and binding alternatives available in some cases.
If people want to blast their lies and propaganda out in all directions - I say let them - there are two sides to any story, and the other party will always have the ability to respond.
The trouble is, that theoretical ability to have your own say might not be sufficient to undo the damage.
A topical example is abuse of teachers by pupils. It has been the case for some years that a mere allegation made by a child of inappropriate behaviour on the part of a teacher has been sufficient to dramatically disrupt that teacher's career, not to mention causing them considerable distress. Suspension has been almost automatic for many employers, the teacher can find their name and photograph all over the local paper next to nasty headlines, and so on. As a consequence, the stigma attached to some malicious accusations can remain for many years, even if the case was investigated and the teacher completely cleared (or as in many cases, after the accusations were dropped with no further action taken against the teacher in the first place).
Now, what use is a teacher's ability to put up something silly like a statement of fact on their personal web site that hardly anyone will ever read, if every child they ever teach in future will have seen them dragged through the mud on social networking sites anyway and told their parents about how Mr Smith is a Very Bad Man? This is the dark side of the unregulated Internet, and when you've reached the point where you can drive even the best teachers to leave the profession entirely because it's just not worth it, I think you have to question whether the child-like, anything-goes attitude is really still worth it now the Internet is all grown up.
Sure they do, and they're just fine if you have more money than sense and your lawyer on speed dial. Here in the UK, however, we tend to consider formal court action a last resort, and to try to resolve things via less formal (and expensive and time-consuming) means first. Full legal actions are a significant hassle, the cost of which in time and/or money may be disproportionate to the damage caused even if the damage is real.
Whatever happened to "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
It was a cute sound bite but a dumb idea then, and it's still a cute sound bite but a dumb idea now.
Protecting political speech is one thing, but I have no intention of defending to the death your "right" to tell vicious lies about someone that destroy their life just because you have time/money/media control/influence that they do not and you happen not to like them.
This is why absolute free speech is a dumb idea, which in turn is why no country actually guarantees it in law.
Better is to allow the ISPs at their option to pull content they believe their customers posted in bad faith, which responsible ISPs did with regularity in the US before doing so made them responsible when they missed a case of it.
I'm not sure that is better at all. Either an ISP has an editorial function, or it does not. If you want to claim that you are not responsible for any content you carry, then act as a common carrier (or whatever your jurisdiction calls it) and don't actively read, alter, moderate or otherwise influence the data you carry. If you want to have the rights to scan or edit data passing through your network on an individual basis, based on the decisions of your own staff or the commercial agreements you choose to make to promote some content over other content, then you are no longer a mere conduit, and you must expect to be held accountable for the content you provide and any privacy violations that occur when you read data you shouldn't. I don't see how any middle ground in the legal position is not wide open to abuse, even if some responsible staff at some ISPs would not in fact abuse it.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, depending on your jurisdiction, it is quite likely that the definition of "public" (or whatever similar term your legal system uses) is actually based on observability from a public place, not on whether the object of the observation is actually on public property themselves. Thus we see things like Google's Street View cameras getting away with peering into rooms in homes or looking over fences, or paparazzi flying around celebrity homes in helicopters, carrying cameras with huge telephoto lenses. In some places, such behaviours have been deemed inappopriate, and services like Street View have suffered the consequences, but I wouldn't say that was the norm by any means.
Also, just as an aside, I think only one of my previous examples relates specifically to observing someone who is themselves on private property anyway. The others can and do happen in public places, they're just not observations that a typical person going about their normal daily lives would be able to make. The latter might be a better benchmark when we consider terms like "reasonable expectation of privacy", but again it is certainly open to debate whether the law in most places would take that view.
See also numerous recent stories of government here in the UK facing criticism for installing CCTV cameras outside people's bedroom windows, putting people through virtual strip search machines at airports, etc. Sensitive images have subsequently leaked that would not have been observable by a regular passer-by, even though they were taken from a public place, because they required the use of specific technology to collect.
What I know, is mine.
Perhaps, but how you came to find it out and who you shared it with are often under your control. We don't (yet) have the ability to selectively erase people's memories, but we certainly can punish undesirable behaviour, such as collecting information by going around spying on someone, or betraying a confidence by sharing with the whole world some sensitive information you were given privately.
In any case, most of the serious problems in this area are not about what an individual person knows, but about what an organisation "knows". Organisations can be large and disproportionately powerful compared to individuals, and it is necessary to rebalance their relative strength to prevent abuse of individual rights and freedoms.
In the particular case of corporations, we are always talking about an artificial legal entity that is granted a certain status in law because we consider it useful in society to do so. Such corporations should be afforded only such rights and freedoms as continue to benefit society. We can restrict their behaviour as much as we feel like, up to and including eliminating them completely, if it is in the best interests of our society to do so.
A photo taken in a public park is not "owned" by anyone. The light bouncing off your body is the common property of all.
Really? Even if it's taken with a telephoto lens, looking over your shoulder to capture you entering a PIN while making a card payment? Even if it's taken up a girl's skirt using a concealed camera in a low-carry bag? Even it uses new technology to render intimate images of someone that could not be seen with the naked eye? What about driving up to your home on a public road, raising a camera on a robot arm right up to a little gap you left in the curtains of each bedroom window, and snapping intimate photos of everyone in your family getting changed? And what about video? If a video is just a series of photos, and photographing anything in a public place is acceptable, can someone just follow you around all day, standing two feet behind you with a camcorder, and then publish a daily journal of your entire life every time you leave your home?
One of the biggest problems with this sort of debate is the assumption that absolute rules like "If you're in a public place, anything goes" are still worth anything. Modern technology is rapidly changing what is possible, and it is far from clear that all uses of that technology are good things. What is a public place, anyway? The implications of old definitions based on where the general public could access or where the general public could observe are completely different with modern technology providing many opportunities that would technically fit those criteria but that certainly aren't in the original spirit of the rule.
There is a huge difference between:
Well, actually, that's more than half a dozen significant, objective differences.
This is obviously not a black and white issue, particularly if the kind of data we're talking about is photos. In a photo, an individual can be the main focus, not the main focus but clearly identifiable, or simply in the background. Moreover, photos might show public places, where it seems reasonable to assume you may be observed casually to some extent. The more interesting questions revolve around what expectations of privacy are fair and should be enforceable in a world where it's no longer just the other people you pass in the street who can see you, but you can also be systematically observed and recorded.
I doubt an alternative as extreme as giving everyone a power of veto over any record they ever appeared in in any form would be desirable even if it were practical. But the current situation is widely abused, and it does cause a lot of background unpleasantness for a lot of people, and it does cause very serious problems for an unlucky few (whose numbers are fast increasing). Something Must Be Done(TM).
In the age of the Internet, we have businesses like Google and Facebook who on the one hand provide services that many people find useful but on the other hand have practically built a business model around invading privacy in ways not everyone (including those who don't use their services) wants to accept. It is certainly fair to consider whether our historical assumptions in terms of privacy are still valid today, and whether we need to update our ideas about what we do and don't allow such organisations to do, rather than just assuming that if modern technology allows a certain behaviour (and even if a lot of people want that behaviour) we should permit it without question.
I don't mind that. If fully informed and rational adults are willing to give up some privacy in exchange for some convenience, who am I to tell them they may not do so?
The sad thing, to me, is that the trend in recent years has been for corporations to just decide for us that everyone is like that, and act accordingly, because it makes them more money and privacy laws are so weak in most places that there has been nothing to stop the rot. Not everyone is happy for that sort of thing to happen.
Also, not everyone is mature enough and sufficiently aware of the facts to make an informed and rational decision. Those who are not include children, adults with learning disabilities, and non-technical/legal people who simply don't realise the implications of uploading data that they think only their "friends" can see.
Once again we agree on the principle, but once again I suspect we really could support your "very high" burden of proof in this case. If the media reporting is at all accurate, it seems we're not talking about someone stabbing someone else because they once saw a reference to how bad the other person was in a movie. Rather, we seem to be talking about someone who has been actively advocating doing bad things for a long time, and a perpetrator who had spent a lot of time watching videos of that particular advocate and who pointed straight at him when asked why she did it.
Doesn't it make more sense to actually target the people who sent the British Military to Afghanistan, rather than innocent civilians?
So your question is, if I wanted to try to kill someone because I was angry about a political decision, would it be more ethical to stab an MP than a member of the general public?
Have you stopped beating your wife yet?
It's politicians that make the decisions that get people killed and maimed but don't really put themselves in danger. Politicians are reckless with peoples lives, while making sure they are living comfortably and safe.
Perhaps. However, given the amount of dubious reporting and the kind of "intelligence" that we now know was being circulated even at Parliament level at the time, I'm not convinced any MPs not in Blair's inner circle really had a chance to make a properly informed decision. I'm hesitant to blame any MP who voted for the war if they were being misled about the facts. In short, I don't think it's fair to assign collective responsibility if it wasn't really a collective decision at all. If anyone is going to be held accountable for the war, it should be those who were really behind the decision to enter it.
Be fair. Technically they do have freedom of speech...
Not really. Things like defamation or incitement to murder are still illegal pretty much everywhere. I suspect that the line where speech crosses into illegality is further over in somewhere like the US where there is a certain social weight placed on freedom of speech, but it's still not an absolute.
I'd say the more preferable position is to err on the side of being permissive.
On that we agree entirely: we should always give the benefit of the doubt to freedom, and restrict freedoms by law only with a clear reason for doing so. (See my sig...) I just think that if we're actually at the point where a serving representative can almost be killed while doing their duty, by someone who has clearly lost the plot after being bombarded by hateful propaganda, we're rather past the "benefit of the doubt" stage.
There is a liberal tendency around these parts to pretend that external influences do not affect individual actions. You can see it very clearly in other contexts too. For example, watch what happens on Slashdot if anyone gets within a mile of suggesting a connection between spending all day playing realistic, violent video games and becoming more aggressive in real life.
While it might make people feel warm and fuzzy to believe that there is no connection between harmful behaviour and external influences relating to it, and that the bad behaviour is all entirely down to individual free will, that is so obviously untrue in the face of real world experience that beyond a certain point it just sounds like trying to justify the unjustifiable because they don't like the conclusion they will be forced to draw otherwise. As I said elsewhere in this thread, if you don't believe external influence affects people's judgement, just ask the advertising industry.
You believe in free will?
As in some idealised ability to reason and make decisions completely independent of past or present surroundings?
No, not for an instant.
This is a totally black and white issue. The US is not subject to censorship by any foreign nation. Period. The reasons don't matter.
In which case, the US is harbouring those who wish to kill our political leaders, which is clearly an act of war. Maybe we should start dropping nuclear bombs on you? Oh, no, wait, black and white arguments are usually stupidly extreme and not how civilised nations deal with real problems if they actually want to solve them.
More on topic, why should an MP not face the same dangers that they have created for the general population?
I don't follow. The MP was attacked during a constituency surgery, supposedly while there to meet constituents to hear their concerns. In what was is the danger of being attacked in that context as a result of an action he took in his official capacity something that would also apply to the general population?
(a) This is not a black-and-white issue, but the idea that people are completely immune to any external influence and therefore those who attempt to cause results indirectly should not be held at all responsible is crazy to me. Just ask advertisers.
(b) This very nearly was a murder. The MP concerned was seriously injured.
Unfortunately, your approach allows some very nasty people to literally get away with murder. All they have to do is make sure someone else pulls the trigger and let them take the fall. I don't think such a simplistic approach is compatible with justice in any useful sense of the term.
We have freedom of speech.
No, you don't. You have freedom of speech when it suits your authorities to permit it, and then only until someone has brought a civil action against you under any of various other laws that limit your right to exercise that "freedom". To my knowledge, there is no country on the planet the provides an absolute protection for freedom of speech in law, and there are good reasons for that.
Odd, I'm British and I haven't noticed any government cameras in my house. Or on the road outside it for that matter. Maybe they're just very well hidden.
Well, if you live in Birmingham, that might well be true.
This is the sort of thing that gets on my nerves. I am all for defending freedoms, but freedom must be exercised responsibly.
This is a case where a Member of Parliament -- roughly the counterpart of your Representatives in the US -- was attacked and nearly died, while performing his fundamental constitutional duty to meet a member of his constituency supposedly to hear her concerns. Your President walks around protected by the most high profile private army in the world because of that sort of threat, and the danger it poses to the effective functioning of government.
There is nothing responsible about such attacks, nor about advocating them. At some point, the MP's right to do his job safely outweighs someone else's right to freely advocate harming him, and if you get to the point where someone is getting stabbed then you have gone waaaaay over that line.
I don't know how to answer the questions properly in a single post on a forum like this. You could write entire books on the subject of what privacy really means in an age of fast-evolving technology, what real dangers arise if it is given up or taken away, what "dangers" are more fear than reality, and so on.
One thing that is clear is that once privacy is lost, it is very hard and sometimes impossible to truly recover it. Thus the penalties for invasion of privacy in the first place must be a strong deterrent. Also, the kinds of rulings courts can make in terms of injunctions and/or financial awards need to support practical steps that can be taken to limit the damage from an invasion of privacy, even if taking those steps is far more expensive than any direct financial loss suffered by the victim.
However, right now, if the authorities do anything to an infringer at all, it tends to be fining them a token amount for an invasion in a civil court or announcing publicly that they are naughty at the end of a regulator-led action several years after the fact. This isn't a deterrent, it's a joke for the boardroom coffee break.
Instead, we should be fining businesses some staggering proportion of their annual income in a civil court and/or making the directors/officers personally liable for the inappropriate behaviour of their organisations as they would be in certain other cases and then bringing criminal charges against them accordingly. Basically, the response needs to be on an entirely different scale to what we have today.
Until we see that sort of shift, powerful organisations like multinational corporations and government departments aren't going to care, because the penalty is only money and only pocket change at that. Meanwhile, the unlucky guy in the street whose life gets screwed up is going to be the only one suffering any real damage when privacy is invaded.
What is the value of your privacy? How do you quantify the damage caused by loss of said privacy?
This is the problem with lawsuits that try to reduce everything to dollar amounts. That might be an objective measure in some sense, but the value of the most important things in life is rarely measured in cash, and often compensation for losing them can't be measured in cash either.
Since when was IE9 actually launched? Are we seriously predicting the doom of IE because not so many people downloaded a browser that isn't even released yet?
There are legitimate concerns for web developers about how widely IE9 will be adopted, not least the operating systems it will run on (or not), but for goodness' sake, this whole story is just premature.
I think the big difference in most of the cases you mentioned is that there is some sort of objective test, potentially an automatic one, that could be applied. Things get more difficult when you get into subjective issues, which is why we have courts in the first place. Courts can be expensive and time-consuming, which is why we have less formal but still independent and binding alternatives available in some cases.
If people want to blast their lies and propaganda out in all directions - I say let them - there are two sides to any story, and the other party will always have the ability to respond.
The trouble is, that theoretical ability to have your own say might not be sufficient to undo the damage.
A topical example is abuse of teachers by pupils. It has been the case for some years that a mere allegation made by a child of inappropriate behaviour on the part of a teacher has been sufficient to dramatically disrupt that teacher's career, not to mention causing them considerable distress. Suspension has been almost automatic for many employers, the teacher can find their name and photograph all over the local paper next to nasty headlines, and so on. As a consequence, the stigma attached to some malicious accusations can remain for many years, even if the case was investigated and the teacher completely cleared (or as in many cases, after the accusations were dropped with no further action taken against the teacher in the first place).
Now, what use is a teacher's ability to put up something silly like a statement of fact on their personal web site that hardly anyone will ever read, if every child they ever teach in future will have seen them dragged through the mud on social networking sites anyway and told their parents about how Mr Smith is a Very Bad Man? This is the dark side of the unregulated Internet, and when you've reached the point where you can drive even the best teachers to leave the profession entirely because it's just not worth it, I think you have to question whether the child-like, anything-goes attitude is really still worth it now the Internet is all grown up.
Sure they do, and they're just fine if you have more money than sense and your lawyer on speed dial. Here in the UK, however, we tend to consider formal court action a last resort, and to try to resolve things via less formal (and expensive and time-consuming) means first. Full legal actions are a significant hassle, the cost of which in time and/or money may be disproportionate to the damage caused even if the damage is real.
Whatever happened to "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
It was a cute sound bite but a dumb idea then, and it's still a cute sound bite but a dumb idea now.
Protecting political speech is one thing, but I have no intention of defending to the death your "right" to tell vicious lies about someone that destroy their life just because you have time/money/media control/influence that they do not and you happen not to like them.
This is why absolute free speech is a dumb idea, which in turn is why no country actually guarantees it in law.
Better is to allow the ISPs at their option to pull content they believe their customers posted in bad faith, which responsible ISPs did with regularity in the US before doing so made them responsible when they missed a case of it.
I'm not sure that is better at all. Either an ISP has an editorial function, or it does not. If you want to claim that you are not responsible for any content you carry, then act as a common carrier (or whatever your jurisdiction calls it) and don't actively read, alter, moderate or otherwise influence the data you carry. If you want to have the rights to scan or edit data passing through your network on an individual basis, based on the decisions of your own staff or the commercial agreements you choose to make to promote some content over other content, then you are no longer a mere conduit, and you must expect to be held accountable for the content you provide and any privacy violations that occur when you read data you shouldn't. I don't see how any middle ground in the legal position is not wide open to abuse, even if some responsible staff at some ISPs would not in fact abuse it.