Category Archives: Defamation and Privacy
Ammar Hassan, ‘The Right to Be Forgotten, Except by AI’
ABSTRACT Europe’s proposed reforms risk shrinking data rights when they should be strengthening them. Imagine a woman who, in 2016, posts on a health forum about a medication that is not working for her. She posts under a pseudonym, believing it will keep her anonymous, because she wants advice from people who understand her situation. […]
Christina Lee, ‘Protecting Consumers in the Interactions Behind AI Agents’
ABSTRACT This Essay shines a light on a challenge created by the rapid mainstreaming of AI agents for consumer use. An AI agent’s value proposition is that they can, without explicit user intervention, perform tasks and actions to the user’s benefit. Delivering on this proposition often requires that the AI agent transact with third parties […]
Santos, Gray, Bielova and Ahuja, ‘Usable and lawful: can consent be both?’
ABSTRACT Under the GDPR, a valid consent must satisfy a number of requirements to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the ePrivacy Directive (ePD). The article evaluates the design of consent banners using a common and popular usability inspection method in human-computer interaction scholarship known as heuristic evaluation, which enables the researcher […]
Ralf Poscher, ‘Resubstantivising Data Protection Rights’
ABSTRACT In this paper, Ralf Poscher addresses the question of what substantive freedom or interest the right to data protection is about. Drawing on German and European judgments on data protection and on theoretical conceptualizations of privacy, the author argues that data protection does not safeguard against actual violations (or at least a concrete danger […]
Maxim Osovsky, ‘Common Privacy Norms for Websites: Origins, Convergence, and Institutional Redesign’
ABSTRACT The normative framework that presently governs website privacy practices did not originate in any single international instrument or coordinated global legislative initiative. Rather, it comprises a constellation of interlocking obligations — prior consent to non-essential tracking, transparent privacy notices, identification of the controller, enforceable rights of access and erasure, breach notification duties, purpose-limited retention, […]
Elisa Orrù, ‘On the Nexus between Privacy and Autonomy: A Contextual Integrity Approach’
ABSTRACT Privacy and autonomy are closely linked. In privacy theory and law, there is agreement that privacy is necessary for autonomy. In order to make decisions according to our own preferences and live our lives according to our own goals, we need protected, ie private, physical and metaphorical spaces. If privacy enables autonomy, then a […]
Nuno Pires Salpico, ‘Compensation Under the GDPR: Does Data Protection Law Require Damage – and Where to Find It?’
Uncertainty still hangs over the private enforcement of the GDPR, particularly with regard to the right to compensation. More recently, the CJEU has increasingly been called upon to clarify issues concerning the application of Art 82 GDPR. Yet, this debate remains open: the concept of damage, the criteria for its assessment, and the boundaries between […]
Hilary Young, ‘The Suitability of Defamation Actions to Small Claims Adjudication’
ABSTRACT Small claims courts aim to improve access to justice by creating quicker, less formal modes of adjudication. Typically, defamation claims have been excluded from small claims courts’ jurisdiction in common law countries, though Ontario is an exception. This article examines the suitability of small claims adjudication of defamation actions and is grounded in both […]
Call for Papers: Anti-SLAPP Law in Canada and Beyond: University of New Brunswick, 17-18 June 2027
The theme of the conference is to assess the effectiveness of Canada’s anti-SLAPP laws and to draw lessons from the Canadian experience for other jurisdictions. As one of the earlier jurisdictions to adopt anti-SLAPP legislation, the strengths and weaknesses of Canada’s laws are becoming apparent, providing lessons for jurisdictions that have recently adopted anti-SLAPP legislation […]
Jan Veldsink, ‘Privacy Is Not Enough: On Identity, Agentic AI, and What We Are Actually Losing’
ABSTRACT Privacy law was built to protect data. But the emergence of persistent, context-aggregating agentic AI systems poses a threat that data protection cannot address: the reduction of a person’s plural, context-dependent identity to a single statistical composite. This essay introduces the concept of cognitive identity capture-the process by which an agentic AI system, through […]