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Washington and Lee University School of Law Prof. Josh Fairfield has received a Fulbright Grant to explore the American and European models of privacy, which Fairfield says are fundamentally different, and whether privacy may be looked at as more of a collective good--like the environment, for example.
Fairfield is an expert in electronic commerce, the law and the economics of virtual worlds and video games. He began to study privacy when it became apparent what massive amounts of data the creators of virtual worlds could access.
“They have terabytes of data on every single action, motion, discussion and transaction their users have,” he says.
This summer, Fairfield will travel to the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn, Germany, where he and his peers will use experiments, rather than traditional legal case analysis, to ask, “What’s gone wrong with the American property model of privacy?”
Fairfield says the American model of privacy as property and that you can sell for as little as you like, “and we do every day,” differs from the European model, in which it is believed that privacy is a dignity interest.
“It’s more complicated to part with your dignity than it is with your property. And that both protects consumers in Europe more and hampers business in Europe more,” Fairfield says.
Fairfield says despite the common perception that “big brother” is the problem when it comes to privacy invasions, it may be more true that “little brother” is responsible.
“We’d like to test whether people are selling their own personal information too cheaply or whether we’re selling each other’s information too cheaply,” said Fairfield.
He explains that companies are now benefitting not only from users willing to share information online about themselves but also information about their friends.
Though Fairfield has always told Facebook his birth date is April 1, 1984, for example, the social network recently displayed his correct birth date, which Fairfield explains is due to the site’s connection with his wife’s cell phone, where that information is stored.
“That’s the thing about networks,” he says. “It’s not hard to patch the holes. Once you get enough of a network, you can complete the thing.”
Fairfield says he aims to show consumers that they are not only revealing massive amounts of detail about themselves and their own lives but their peers as well, and “they are selling that information for almost nothing at all.” He adds, “privacy is not just my property, privacy is more like my environment. When you blow it with your personal information, you actually blow it for me, too.”
