{"id":1662,"date":"2013-04-12T12:35:32","date_gmt":"2013-04-12T11:35:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/?p=1662"},"modified":"2013-04-12T12:35:32","modified_gmt":"2013-04-12T11:35:32","slug":"who-owns-your-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=1662","title":{"rendered":"Who owns your identity?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cOn the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.\u201d\u00a0 Right?\u00a0 Not if you are known at all.\u00a0 Those days are gone.\u00a0 As if to prove the point, one of my favorite web sites is on the wrong side of this issue.\u00a0 An actress unsuccessfully sued<\/a> imdb.com for lost wages for having included her age on their site.\u00a0 There is a well known axiom in Hollywood that starlets have a half-life, and age is something that is best kept secret.\u00a0 IMDB<\/a> countered that what matters is not an actress’ age but her ability to play a certain age.<\/p>\n

My point is this: she sued and was unable to have information about her removed.\u00a0 Is age something that you believe should be private?\u00a0 I do.\u00a0 I especially do for people born after 1989 where a birthday and a home city can lead to someone guessing your Social Security Number.<\/p>\n

But what about other physical attributes one might consider private?\u00a0 \u201cHe has a mole that you can only see if he’s naked.\u201d\u00a0 How about illness?\u00a0 \u201cThis actor cannot lift his arm due to a stroke.\u201d\u00a0 Once the information is out there, there’s no way to get rid of it. \u00a0 And this in the UK, which is subject to the European Data Privacy Directive.\u00a0 The situation is considerably bleaker for your personal information in the United States.<\/p>\n

Related to this is The Right To Be Forgotten<\/a>.\u00a0 In Europe they are considering new rules that say that you have a right to have information about you removed.\u00a0 This has some American firms in an uproar, arguing that a lack of transparency only increases risk and inefficiency.\u00a0 But what are the limits?\u00a0 What about this actress who doesn’t want her age known?\u00a0 How did her age provide for market efficiency?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cOn the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.\u201d\u00a0 Right?\u00a0 Not if you are known at all.\u00a0 Those days are gone.\u00a0 As if to prove the point, one of my favorite web sites is on the wrong side of this issue.\u00a0 An actress unsuccessfully sued imdb.com for lost wages for having included her age on their … Continue reading “Who owns your identity?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,17,30],"tags":[38,502,37,496],"class_list":["post-1662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-complexity","category-economics","category-humanity","tag-identity","tag-internet","tag-privacy","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1662"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1664,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662\/revisions\/1664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}