Law Students

Privacy Online?

IP Osgoode - Intellectual Property Law . I help clients develop their website privacy policies. As an internet lawyer, I know how critical it is to have not only the appropriate language in place, but more importantly, to have the processes in place that support the policy. If you do not have the processes, the language in the policy won't be of much help when you most need it most (i.e. when you are forced to make a good faith argument in court regarding what you actually do in fact).

That said, I do not support any kind of heavy handed regulatory regime as the link implies. OK, they don't call it heavy handed but that is likely what it would amount to. Take HIPAA for example, the statute and regulations that support health care privacy. This is a monstrous piece of legislation becuase of its complexity and historically has not been widely enforced. Sure we need health care privacy, just like we need online privacy, but legislators can easily get carried away listening to a (usually) small and vocal number of constituents.

The result? Well that is the elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss. What is the ROI to the society as a whole? This type of regulation has significant costs associated with it, which the consumer will ultimately bear, and small businesses won't be able to cope with. Most small health care providers are barely compliant with HIPAA and it is about to get much worse (see HIPAA Survival Guide) with the push to electronic health records.The little guys will get eaten alive and we will end up with less primary care providers at a time when we need more.

In short, privacy has systemic consequences that are rarely considered. What we need is a common sense approach but somehow that is never what we get. What we need with respect to online privacy is to first determine what is the harm? Once we know that then we can advocate for preventive common sense remedies. We don't put tolls on all roads simply because a few speed and drive drunk, rather we punish those that do not do the right thing.

Full post as published by LawTechTV on June 11, 2009 (boomark / email).