Privacy Law
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the age of Facebook
In this blog post I am borrowing more than just the title from Niel Postman’s seminal work on media studies. I am also borrowing the metaphors which were utilized by him, originally spawned by my personal heroes, George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. I quote the thesis of Postman’s work which has been succinctly stated at [...]
The Fading Norm
Image by graney via Flickr
It would seem natural and obvious to a user of social media that technology is changing the norm of privacy. Here the change is not limited to technology itself but the sociological response to it, as I sense we become more agreeable to share personally identifiable information. This change may [...]
The privacy debate is raging online with the recent statements by Mark Zuckerberg that Online Privacy is a fading norm. the onset of cloud computing presents another challenge to online privacy. Columbia Law Prof. Eben Moglen at a recent talk given at the Internet Society of New York, lucidly explains the threats posed to privacy [...]
A broader implementation of human readable contracts
The success and popularity of the creative commons license is symptomatic of the growing sentiment of Internet users and authors against the expansionary nature of intellectual property law. The creative commons license allows the authors of creative works to license out of default copyright provisions and allows greater rights to the users of their [...]
Two Acts, One Trick
Within hours of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, news channels were making comparisons of the attacks to the terror strike on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The invented coinage, “India’s 9/11” gained quick currency and was applied to how the attacks had affected each one of us individually. The similarity is not [...]
Bombay HC, “Reveal thyself Blogger”
A defamation suit made the Bombay HC say, “abracadabra relief granted against Google”. Google Inc. is the owner of the popular blogging platform Blogpost. Blogpost hosted a blog by one toxicwriter (a pseudonym chosen by the blogger to mask his/her identity)…
Govt, Blackberry makers to jointly resolve security issues
After the recent bomb blasts in Delhi the national security v. blackberry (i know it rhymes).. argument is well being argued again read more here
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Disdain for Disclaimer’s
The Bar Council has recently been debating allowing lawyers to advertise on the Internet. Most of the websites of lawyers/law firms from India have a standard disclaimer. The disclaimer is essentially a statement of conformity with the bar council rules which place an absolute bar on advocates advertising and soliciting for any purpose, and indicating [...]
The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2006
I have discussed at length the absence of privacy and data protection standards in India. Hence it came as quite a surprise, that a bill on data protection had been introduced in the Rajya Sabha. The bill is titled as The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2006 and was introduced on December 8, 2006 by MP. [...]
Cyber Cafe Record Retention
District magistrate Chandigarh Administration, has prohibited the use of cyber cafes by unknown persons, whose identifications could not be established by the owners of the cafés. The café owners have been asked to maintain registers to establish identities of visitors/users by making entries regarding visitors’ names, addresses, telephone numbers and identity proofs. Visitors/users would make [...]
