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July 18, 2006
Intermission—Everyday
This is just a quick reminder that the Internet can really be quite nice.
Posted by Rob Courtney at 04:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 13, 2006
Getting to know you: Tech policy and the class action
It’s become fashionable in the tech policy community to self-identify with environmentalists. You see it most when people talk about cultural environmentalism. But as a very green friend of mine told me on his way to Lawrence Lessig’s class, the analogy doesn’t seem very productive in its current form. Terrestrial environmentalism, after all, gains its strength not only from aesthetic concerns, but also straight human health issues. Cultural environmentalism, on the other hand, seems untethered to meatspace concerns and so comes off as very ivory tower.
Earthjustice has these great ads. I can’t find one now, but they have normal folks standing in t-shirts that say “plaintiff.” I love the ads because they encourage the viewer to consider how he himself is harmed when we drill in ANWR, or poison rivers, or drive Hummers. They take the issues out of the ivory tower and bring them to ground.
Last month I got a notice from AT&T that they had “clarified” their privacy policy to make it “clearer” that they own all my data and will use or release it as they see fit. Made me mad, but since my DSL was part of a six-month package, I can’t drop AT&T without incurring termination charges. Every one of AT&T’s customers is in the same boat, more or less. So I’m damaged by AT&T’s action, but lack the wherewithal to do much about it on my own. This is a great opportunity for a well-fought class action. I, and most of AT&T’s customers, would probably care less actually recovering our damages in this case than just sending a signal to AT&T that this kind of thing has very real costs.
The net policy arena is full of these small-damages, widely-spread kinds of claims. Vigorous class action prosecution could really defuse egregious corporate behaviors that don’t quite cross the threshold of unlawfulness. And it’s not just privacy policies—class actions are a potential mechanism to get companies to take security of customer information seriously, too. This year C and I have received three notifications that laptops with our personal information were stolen from various corporations entrusted with that infromation. Knock on wood, our actual damages from this are very slight—but each one of these breaches involved hundreds of thousands of people. Classic class action stuff. And increasing tiering of the net could give rise to class action type relief as well.
I imagine there is some private litigation going on in these areas. But there is an obvious space for one of the big ideology groups to step in and inject some high level coordination, as well as impressive resources and skill, into moving things to the next level. EFF? CDT? ACLU? Think about it.
Posted by Rob Courtney at 02:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack