Law Commons^™

Brokered Abuse, Thomas E. Kadri

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Data brokers are abuse enablers. These companies, which traffic information about people for profit, facilitate interpersonal abuse by making it easier to find and contact people. By thwarting people’s obscurity, brokers expose them to physical, psychological, financial, and reputational harm. To date, there have been four common legal responses to this situation: prohibiting abusive acts, mandating broker transparency, limiting data collection, and restricting data disclosure. Though these measures each have some merit, none is adequate, and several recent privacy laws have even made matters worse. Put simply, the current legal landscape is neither effective nor empathetic.

This Essay explores the …

Addressing Personal Data Collection As Unfair Methods Of Competition, Maurice E. Stucke

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Enforcers, policymakers, scholars, and the public are concerned about Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and recently Microsoft and their influence. That influence comes in part from personal data. These companies are “data-opolies,” in that they are powerful firms that control our data. The data comes from their vital ecosystems of interlocking online platforms and services, which attract users; sellers; advertisers; website publishers; and software, app, and accessory developers.

The public sentiment is that a few companies, in possessing so much data, possess too much power. Something is amiss. Cutting across political lines, many Americans think Big Tech’s economic power is a …

The Relationship Between Privacy And Antitrust, Maurice Stucke

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This Essay recaps the policymakers’, enforcers’, and scholars’ thinking on the relationship between antitrust and privacy. Currently, the thinking is that improving privacy protection is a necessary, but not sufficient, step to address some of the risks posed by these data-opolies and deter data hoarding, a key source of their power.

The policies proposed in Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America as of early 2022 all assume that with more competition, privacy and well-being will be restored. In looking at the reforms proposed to date, policymakers and scholars have not fully addressed several fundamental issues.

One issue is whether more …

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Wise Legal Giant, Thomas A. Schweitzer

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No abstract provided.

Digital Gatekeepers, Thomas E. Kadri

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If in William Blackstone's time we might have thought of a person's home as their castle, in Mark Zuckerberg's time we might say that their website is too. Under cyber-trespass laws like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, courts have treated online platforms as digital gatekeepers--as property owners that may permit and restrict access to websites much like landowners may do with private land in the real world. If platforms withhold their consent through words or inference, cyber-trespass laws let them enforce their preferences about who may access their services and gather information from the internet. Concerned about reputations and …

Commentary To Dean Fershee, Judy Cornett

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No abstract provided.

The Modern Fight For Media Freedom In The United States, Jonathan Peters

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The First Amendment as a subject is challenging and provocative, and scholarly and popular understandings of it are changing. New communication technologies are pushing lawyers, judges, and scholars to revisit, and sometimes rethink, old legal doctrines and concepts. In the area of privacy, we have to think today about encryption and a website's terms of service. In the area of copyright, we have to think about peer-to-peer file sharing and the licenses granted by iTunes. In the area of sexual expression, we have to think about sexting, revenge porn, and deep fakes.'

This is the emerging state of play for …

In Defense Of The American Community Survey, Michael Lewyn

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Discusses policy and constitutional arguments against the ACS, a yearly survey administered by the Census Bureau.

Infracompetitive Privacy, Greg Day, Abbey R. Stemler

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One of the chief anticompetitive effects of modern business lies in antitrust’s blind spot. Platform-based companies (“platforms”) have innovated a business model whereby they offer consumers “free" and low-priced services in exchange for their personal information. With this data, platforms can design products, target consumers, and sell such information to third parties. The problem is that platforms can inflict greater costs on users and markets in the form of lost privacy than efficiencies generated from their low prices. Consumers, as examples, spend billions of dollars annually to remedy privacy breaches and, alarmingly, participate unwittingly in experiments designed to manipulate their …

Gina, Big Data, And The Future Of Employee Privacy, Brad Areheart

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Threats to privacy abound in modern society, but individuals currently enjoy little meaningful legal protection for their privacy interests. We argue that the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) offers a blueprint for preventing employers from breaching employee privacy. GINA has faced significant criticism since its enactment in 2008: commentators have dismissed the law as ill-conceived, unnecessary, and ineffective. While we concede that GINA may have failed to alleviate anxieties about medical genetic testing, we assert that it has unappreciated value as an employee-privacy statute. In the era of big data, protections for employee privacy are more pressing than protections against …

The Hipaa Privacy Rule And The Eu Gdpr: Illustrative Comparisons, Stacey A. Tovino

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In this Article, Professor Tovino compares and contrasts three illustrative concepts and rights in the Privacy Rule and/or the GDPR, including the concepts of authorization and consent, the rights of amendment and rectification, and the right to erasure. Identified similarities reflect the core values of HHS and the EU with respect to maintaining the confidentiality and privacy of personal data and protected health information, respectively. Identified differences reflect the Privacy Rule's original, narrow focus on health industry participants and individually identifiable health information compared to the GDPR's broad focus on data controllers and personal data. Other differences reflect, perhaps, the …

Online Platforms And The Eu Digital Single Market, Maurice Stucke, Ariel Ezrachi

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Our submission to the U.K. House of Lords, Internal Market Sub-Committee is based on our joint research, which explores the effects Big Data and technology have on competition dynamics. It reviews the use of technology to facilitate collusion, conscious parallelism, and unilateral price discrimination as well as the effects of online and mobile platforms.

Our submission addresses the following issues: • What role does data play in the business model of online platforms? • Can data-driven online platforms have excessive market power? • If so, how can they abuse this power? • If so, how does this happen and what …

Debunking The Myths Over Big Data And Antitrust, Maurice Stucke, Allen Grunes

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What are the implications of Big Data on competition policy? Some argue little, if any, and offer several reasons why Big Data is a passing fad. We disagree.

As we discuss, competition law can play an important role in maximizing the benefits of a data-driven economy, while mitigating its risks. Our aim here is to first address the competitive significance of Big Data and, second, take on ten myths downplaying Big Data’s antitrust significance.

No Mistake About It: The Important Role Of Antitrust In The Era Of Big Data, Maurice Stucke, Allen Grunes

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Competition authorities in Europe (and to a lesser extent in other jurisdictions) are beginning to make data, its uses, and its implications for competition law, a key focus. Some, however, argue that competition law has a limited role to play in the era of big data. We respectfully disagree. Competition law will play an integral role to ensure that we capture the benefits of a data-driven economy while mitigating its associated risks.

After outlining several implications of big data on competition policy, we address some of the myths about big data and competition law. These myths paint with a broad …

The Story Of Us: Resolving The Face-Off Between Autobiographical Speech And Information Privacy, Sonja R. West

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Increasingly more “ordinary” Americans are choosing to share their life experiences with a public audience. In doing so, however, they are revealing more than their own personal stories, they are exposing private information about others as well. The face-off between autobiographical speech and information privacy is coming to a head, and our legal system is not prepared to handle it.

In a prior article, I established that autobiographical speech is a unique and important category of speech that is at risk of being undervalued under current law. This article builds on my earlier work by addressing the emerging conflict between …

Martha’S (And Steve’S) Good Faith: An Officer’S Duty Of Loyalty At The Intersection Of Good Faith And Candor, Joan Macleod Heminway

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This short paper begins to explore whether a corporate officer’s duty of good faith extends to public disclosures of personal facts. Specifically, the paper preliminarily attacks the following question: in the post Stone v. Ritter, post-Gantler v. Stephens era in which we now live, is the absence or inadequacy of an executive officer’s disclosure of personal facts a breach of the duty of good faith and, as a result, the fiduciary duty of loyalty under Delaware law? The answer to this question is tied up in recent jurisprudence of the Delaware Supreme Court at the intersection of the duty of …

Confidentiality And Privacy Implications Of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Stacey A. Tovino

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Advances in science and technology frequently raise new ethical, legal, and social issues, and developments in neuroscience and neuroimaging technology are no exception. Within the field of neuroethics, leading scientists, ethicists, and humanists are exploring the implications of efforts to image, study, treat, and enhance the human brain.

This article focuses on one aspect of neuroethics: the confidentiality and privacy implications of advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging (“fMRI”). Following a brief orientation to fMRI and an overview of some of its current and proposed uses, this article highlights key confidentiality and privacy issues raised by fMRI in the contexts …

Hospital Chaplaincy Under The Hipaa Privacy Rule: Health Care Or "Just Visiting The Sick?", Stacey A. Tovino

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Approximately seventy-nine percent of Americans believe that praying can help people recover from illness, injury or disease, and nearly seventy-seven percent of American patients would like spiritual issues discussed as part of their care. Despite Americans' strong beliefs in the health-related benefits of religious and spiritual practices and traditions, the preamble to the federal Department of Health and Human Services' ("HHS") health information privacy rule (the "Privacy Rule") explains that health care "does not include methods of healing that are solely spiritual" (the "preamble"). The preamble concludes that, "clergy or other religious practitioners that provide solely religious healing services are …

Lawrence V. Texas: The Decision And Its Implications For The Future, Martin A. Schwartz

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No abstract provided.

Use And Disclosure Of Protected Health Information For Research Under The Hippa Privacy Rule, The: Unrealized Patient Autonomy And Burdensome Government Regulation, Stacey A. Tovino

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This article offers a legal and ethical analysis of the requirements of federal privacy regulations (herein after the “Privacy Rules”) relating to the use and disclosure of individually identifiable health information for research activities. Section II of this article provides a legal summary of the Privacy Rules’ complex research provisions. Sections III and IV of this article analyze the Privacy Rules’ research provisions from a legal and ethical perspective. Specifically, Section III addresses whether the Privacy Rules promote autonomy by analyzing certain of the legal rights attributed to individuals who are the subjects of health information including: (1) the general …