Law Commons^™

The First Amendment In The Second Gilded Age, Jack M. Balkin

Buffalo Law Review

How do we pay for the digital public sphere? In the Second Gilded Age, the answer is primarily through digital surveillance and through finding ever new ways to make money out of personal data. Digital capitalism in the Second Gilded Age features an implicit bargain: a seemingly unlimited freedom to speak in exchange for the right to surveil and manipulate end users.To protect freedom of speech in the Second Gilded Age we must distinguish the values of free speech from the judicially created doctrines of the First Amendment. That is because the practical freedom to speak online depends on a …

Tactful Inattention: Erving Goffman, Privacy In The Digital Age, And The Virtue Of Averting One's Eyes, Elizabeth De Armond

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

This Article suggests that we would benefit if we would protect privacy by sometimes requiring tactful inattention by potential users rather than total secrecy by the target. That is, some legal privacy protections should stop emphasizing secrecy and instead emphasize the appropriate uses of personally identifiable and often sensitive information by gelling tactful inattention into legal standards. Culturally, such an expansion may be difficult, as we tend to a “finders-keepers” attitude towards data. However, given technology’s ability to dissolve routine barriers, if we require others to leave some information out of some equations, we may be able to retain …