MySpace or Public Space: The Relevance of Data Protection Laws to Online Social Networking.

Abstract

The law has always struggled to keep abreast of technological innovation. This is especially the case with privacy law. The communications revolution wrought by the Internet has rendered existing privacy jurisprudence obsolete. In the 1980s and 1990s principles-based data protection norms were developed that were designed to be technologically neutral. However they viewed individuals as data subjects and did not anticipate that the subjects would become users of the technology themselves. Online social networks such as MySpace allow individuals to place personal information on the World Wide Web that may potentially be accessible to others including employers and insurers and that may have negative consequences for individuals. Courts in the United States have thus far refused to apply traditional privacy torts to this new arena. This article considers whether data protection principles are capable of filling the gap. It argues that seamless information privacy regimes such as New Zealand’s are capable of preventing the misuse of personal information gathered from online social networks thereby allowing a zone of purely personal “social” space to exist where individuals are free to disseminate and use personal information.