Robin Feldman
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804777049
- eISBN:
- 9780804781572
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804777049.003.0004
- Subject:
- Law, Intellectual Property, IT, and Media Law
This chapter argues that the fluidity of our interactions in modern society makes us particularly vulnerable and requires special attention to the protection of the individual. The battered doctrine ...
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This chapter argues that the fluidity of our interactions in modern society makes us particularly vulnerable and requires special attention to the protection of the individual. The battered doctrine of public and private spheres is inadequate for such purposes, and the attempt to apply that doctrine in modern contexts is producing strange and unsatisfying results. With boundaries that are more permeable than ever, individuals need the ability to maintain some type of control in modern communication and information pathways. The more difficult question concerns what type of control is appropriate and how it should be provided. The chapter suggests creating an individual right that can be described as the ability to maintain identity cohesion. Identity cohesion cannot be accomplished under the rubric of either privacy or property protection, or at least not as we have come to understand those protections under the law. Rather, maintaining identity cohesion will require a right that is both more and less than what is granted in the privacy and property regimes.Less
This chapter argues that the fluidity of our interactions in modern society makes us particularly vulnerable and requires special attention to the protection of the individual. The battered doctrine of public and private spheres is inadequate for such purposes, and the attempt to apply that doctrine in modern contexts is producing strange and unsatisfying results. With boundaries that are more permeable than ever, individuals need the ability to maintain some type of control in modern communication and information pathways. The more difficult question concerns what type of control is appropriate and how it should be provided. The chapter suggests creating an individual right that can be described as the ability to maintain identity cohesion. Identity cohesion cannot be accomplished under the rubric of either privacy or property protection, or at least not as we have come to understand those protections under the law. Rather, maintaining identity cohesion will require a right that is both more and less than what is granted in the privacy and property regimes.
