Category Archives: Defamation and Privacy
Cheng-chi (Kirin) Chang, ‘Superintelligent AI and the Right to Be Forgotten’
ABSTRACT Legal scholars and policymakers assume the ‘right to be forgotten’ requires data controllers to erase personal information. This chapter demonstrates that assumption collapses for superintelligent AI. Neural networks store information as distributed parameters rather than discrete records, making selective deletion mathematically impossible. Machine unlearning fails because superintelligent systems reconstruct deleted data through inference. Post-Singularity […]
Sophie Stalla-Bourdillon, ‘Identifiability, as a Data Risk: Is a Uniform Approach to Anonymisation About to Emerge in the EU?’
ABSTRACT The concept of identifiability remains a foundational yet contentious criterion in European Union (EU) data protection law. Similarly, anonymisation has sparked intense debate. This paper examines recent developments that have shaped the EU’s approaches to identifiability and anonymisation, including trends in the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) case law, national supervisory […]
Hartzog and Solove, ‘Privacy as Contract?’
ABSTRACT Nearly everything people buy, every service they use, every account they create, and even every website they visit involves the collection, use, and transfer of personal data – a matter that is ostensibly governed by privacy notices (also called ‘privacy policies’). Privacy notices are the foundation of privacy regulation; most privacy laws rely on […]
‘European AI FOMO: The European Commission Sacrifices the Digital Acquis at the Altar of AI Hype’
The last 12 months have seen an extraordinary shift in the European Commission’s approach to digital regulation. Faced with intense geopolitical uncertainty and concerns about EU competitiveness and security, we are seeing a shift away from the espoused ‘Brussels Effect’, with the EU placing itself as a global rule setter and emphasising fundamental rights at […]
Daniel Solove, ‘Enforcing Privacy Law: Why Private Litigation Is Essential’
ABSTRACT Enforcement is an essential dimension for effective privacy and data protection laws—and it is probably the most important one. No matter how many privacy laws are enacted and how strong the laws are, if enforcement falls short, the laws will fail to achieve their goals. Unfortunately, the enforcement of privacy laws is often weak […]
David Matta, ‘Private Property without Privacy: Private Information and the Silent Transformation of Ownership in the Information Age’
ABSTRACT Classical political economy treats private property as foundational to economic coordination and individual autonomy. This paper argues that while private property remains formally intact, it has been substantively hollowed out by the erosion of privacy in the information age. The central claim is that private information – defined as the owner’s privileged epistemic access […]
Ignacio Cofone, ‘The Privacy Paradox Is a Misnomer: Data Under Structural Uncertainty’
ABSTRACT The infamous privacy paradox refers to the apparent inconsistency between people’s stated concern for privacy and their readiness to disclose personal information. This phenomenon has sparked two largely disconnected literatures: one offering experimental evidence of inconsistent behavior, and another providing qualitative accounts and defending the importance of privacy. The Article presents an online field […]
Christian Ross, ‘Fair and Balanced: Why We Need a Federal Anti-SLAPP Law for Good-Faith Journalism’
ABSTRACT Strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) pose a serious threat to free expression, often targeting journalists and media outlets to intimidate or silence critical reporting. Many states have adopted anti-SLAPP statutes that provide procedural protections for speech to deter meritless, speech-chilling suits. But not all states have such laws, resulting in a patchwork of […]
Liubomir Nikiforov, ‘Closing the EU Collective Redress Gap: GDPR, RAD and the AI Act for Algorithmic Harms and Digital Fairness’
ABSTRACT Collective actions are gaining traction in the EU, yet the main instruments governing data, consumers and AI remain structurally misaligned with how algorithmic systems generate harms. This paper identifies an ‘EU collective redress gap’ for harms to algorithmic ‘groups of persons’. It uses doctrinal comparison of the GDPR, the Representative Actions Directive (RAD) and […]
Anya Prince, ‘Genes For Sale!’
ABSTRACT In March 2025, 23andMe, the flagship direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing company, filed for bankruptcy. Just like that, the genetic information of 15 million customers was up for sale to the highest bidder, creating a firestorm of reactions from the public, media, state attorneys general, and legislators warning of the dire outcomes that could arise […]