The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet - Hardcover

Solove, Daniel J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300124988 ISBN 13: 9780300124989

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2007

Synopsis

Teeming with chatrooms, online discussion groups, and blogs, the Internet offers previously unimagined opportunities for personal expression and communication. But there’s a dark side to the story. A trail of information fragments about us is forever preserved on the Internet, instantly available in a Google search. A permanent chronicle of our private lives often of dubious reliability and sometimes totally false will follow us wherever we go, accessible to friends, strangers, dates, employers, neighbors, relatives, and anyone else who cares to look. This engrossing book, brimming with amazing examples of gossip, slander, and rumor on the Internet, explores the profound implications of the online collision between free speech and privacy.

 

Daniel Solove, an authority on information privacy law, offers a fascinating account of how the Internet is transforming gossip, the way we shame others, and our ability to protect our own reputations. Focusing on blogs, Internet communities, cybermobs, and other current trends, he shows that, ironically, the unconstrained flow of information on the Internet may impede opportunities for self-development and freedom. Long-standing notions of privacy need review, the author contends: unless we establish a balance between privacy and free speech, we may discover that the freedom of the Internet makes us less free.

 

About this title

About the Author:

Daniel J. Solove is associate professor, George Washington University Law School, and an internationally known expert in privacy law. He is frequently interviewed and featured in media broadcasts and articles, and he is the author of The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age. He lives in Washington, D.C., and blogs at the popular law blog http://www.concurringopinions.com.

Review:

“A timely, vivid, and illuminating book that will change the way you think about privacy, reputation, and speech on the Internet. Daniel Solove tells a series of fascinating and frightening stories about how blogs, social network sites, and other websites are spreading gossip and rumors about people's private lives. He offers a fresh and thought-provoking analysis of a series of wide-ranging new problems and develops useful suggestions about what we can do about these challenges.”—Paul M. Schwartz, professor of law, University of California Berkeley School of Law
(Paul M. Schwartz)

“No one has thought more about the effects of the information age on privacy than Daniel Solove.”—Bruce Schneier, author of Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly about Security in an Uncertain World
(Bruce Schneier)

“As the Internet is erasing the distinction between spoken and written gossip, the future of personal reputation is one of our most vexing social challenges. In this illuminating book, filled with memorable cautionary tales, Daniel Solove incisively analyzes the technological and legal challenges and offers moderate, sensible solutions for navigating the shoals of the blogosphere.”—Jeffrey Rosen, author of The Unwanted Gaze and The Naked Crowd 
(Jeffrey Rosen)

"Much of The Future of Reputation catalogs the ways in which privacy has diminished in an age in which technology allows for the diffusion of information and in which punishments for this diffusion are weak or sometimes simply impratical."—Gary Alan Fine, Wilson Quarterly (Gary Alan Fine Wilson Quarterly 2007-11-01)

"[A] brilliant recent book. . . . An honest and troubling account of the ways that we have become our own enemies."—Siva Vaidyanathan, The Chronicle of Higher Education  (Siva Vaidyanathan The Chronicle of Higher Education 2008-02-01)

"Beneath Solove's legal suggestions rests a keen insight about the extent to which the Internet changes basic questions about privacy."—Mark Williams, MIT's Technology Review 
(MIT's Technology Review Mark Williams)

"Timely and provocative, The Future of Reputation explores a principal dilemma of our age and provides a workable solution that may appeal to readers on both sides of the debate."—Harvard Law Review (Harvard Law Review)

"Solove offers practical advice on how societal norms and laws can catch up with technology's relentless progress. . . . [A] funny and readable call for netizens and legal scholars to accept a more nuanced understanding of privacy."—Bennett Gordon, Utne Reader (Bennett Gordon Utne Reader 2008-01-01)

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0300124988
• ISBN 13: 9780300124989
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256