Law Commons^™

That Guy's A Batterer!: A Scarlet Letter Approach To Domestic Violence In The Information Age, Elaine M. Chiu

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

We have all seen the ads and heard the jingles. Some of us may have even visited the websites. "Come meet your soul mate, come meet your future spouse, come find true love, at Match.com, at eHarmony.com, at Yahoo." Internet dating is a booming business. In 2005, an estimated sixteen million Americans spent more than $245 million looking for love on the Internet. Approximately ten-million Americans are current online daters. In addition to these digital matchmakers, social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace and You Tube offer amazing online communities where folks can advertise their best features. Then, there …

That Guy's A Batterer!: A Scarlet Letter Approach To Domestic Violence In The Information Age, Elaine M. Chiu

Faculty Publications

Despite the remarkable reliance on the Internet as a source of information, we have yet to fully take advantage of it in our movement against domestic violence. Information is used as a weapon in the battle against domestic violence in several limited ways. Yet there is still more we can do with information and, specifically, the Internet, in combating domestic violence. The Scarlet Letter proposal seeks to empower potential victims of domestic violence with information so that they themselves can make choices that will avoid years of suffering and abuse. The idea is to allow public access to the data …