Solove's The Future of Reputation Now Available

Another must read from Daniel Solove! -- Joe Hodnicki

George Washington University Law School professor, author of The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age (2004), and Concurring Opinions blogger Daniel Solove's new book is now available. About the new Yale UP title, he writes:

For quite some time, I've been thinking about the issue of how to balance the privacy and free speech issues involved with blogging and social networking sites. In the book, I do my best to propose some solutions, but my primary goal is to spark debate and discussion. I'm aiming to reach as broad an audience as possible and to make the book lively yet educational. I hope I've achieved these goals.

I bet he has. Check out the book's website. The first chapter is available for download from SSRN. [JH]

The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet
by Daniel J. Solove

List Price: $24.00
Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Yale University Press (October 24, 2007)
ISBN-10: 0300124988
ISBN-13: 978-0300124989

Book Description: 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.