Daniel J. Solove (George Washington University Law School) discusses “The Future of Reputation” at a lecture recorded at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. 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. Children and teenagers are increasingly spilling out their most personal secrets – as well as intimate details about their families and friends – in blogs and social networking sites. In a world where anybody can publish her thoughts to a world-wide audience, how should we balance privacy and free speech? How should the law protect people when harmful gossip and rumors are spread about them on the Internet?

It used to be that when I wanted some privacy, I would go for a walk on the beach, hang-out at home, or even simply put on headphones with my favorite music and crash on my living room floor. That was all it took. Privacy was simple and easy. It was anywhere I wanted it to be. But somehow along the way, privacy became a much more complicated thing. It now is elusive. Unattainable. Virtually impossible to find and/or fully enjoy. I don’t even know what privacy means anymore. Every time I attempt to have a private moment, I seem to get distracted, interrupted or somehow called back to the world I am trying to take a break from. Electronic messengers beep — signaling the arrival of a new email message, text, tweet, voicemail, request for a video chat — or even a local weather alert. My smart phone diligently beckons me with a cacophony of sound effects that I have come to know for what they represent; some sort of electronic message needs my attention. My mobile phone vibrates out of frustration in a last ditch effort to get my attention when I silence it’s audible signals. But personal privacy is much bigger than that. It crosses the border from the world in which I live to the world where I surf and browse; my online presence. There, I am always available, searchable, tweetable. There is no place to hide. No way to “go dark”, or stealth, or just escape the barrage of messages that arrive all around me accompanied by their little sound effects which I have grown so …
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