DIGITAL MULTI-MEDIA AND THE LIMITS OF PRIVACY LAW
Jacqueline D. Lipton
While digital video and multi-media technologies are becoming increasingly prevalent, existing privacy laws tend to focus on text-based personal records. Individuals have little recourse when concerned about infringements of their privacy interests in audio, video, and multi-media files. Often people are simply unaware that video or audio records have been made. Even if they are aware of the existence of the records, they may be unaware of potential legal remedies or unable to afford legal recourse. This paper concentrates on the ability of individuals to obtain legal redress for unauthorized use of audio, video, and multi-media content that infringes their privacy. It focuses on an analysis of the European Union Data Protection Directive. The Directive is one of the most comprehensive digital age legal reforms to address information privacy. Yet even the Directive suffers from shortcomings when applied to audio, video, and multi-media records. The author argues that global law reform is needed to bring privacy law into the age of digital video and multi-media.
This paper focuses on difficulties of applying existing privacy laws to digital multi-media files. There are a number of digital file formats, including still images, audio recordings, video recordings, and combinations of these formats in the form of digital multi-media files . . .
42 CASE W. RES. J. INT’L L. 551 (2010).
