Privacy, Publicity + Defamation

The Federal Trade Commission is contemplating requests by Congress to impose strict privacy rules on the Internet. For its May 13, 2010 article “Tech Industry Takes Steps to Protect Online Privacy,” InfoTech & Telecom News spoke to Pryor Cashman Partner Jeffrey Johnson to get his views about such rules.

Johnson told InfoTech & Telecom News that “[t]rying to mandate privacy policy through a government-directed regulatory scheme would bring about less-than-optimal processes that can confuse rather than elucidate the rights and responsibilities of both the consumer and the service provider. Since the Internet economy is global, country-by-country regulation would only harm growth. It is better that online companies are already focusing on developing a worldwide regime for dealing with privacy issues on a coordinated basis. Otherwise, you open up a hornet’s nest of competing regulations.”

To read the article, please click here.