Post 885

Pri­vacy: Brian Carini sug­gests that pri­vacy poli­cies are worth­less with­out enforce­ment:

What is needed is DRM for pri­vacy. Dig­i­tal rights man­age­ment tech­nol­ogy could pro­tect per­sonal infor­ma­tion the same way that it pro­tects a song, book or movie. This way, an indi­vid­ual could main­tain own­er­ship and con­trol over their per­sonal infor­ma­tion. Stated pri­vacy poli­cies not be rescinded or vio­lated with­out cir­cum­vent­ing the DRM pro­tec­tion, which would of course vio­late the DMCA.

Here’s the orig­i­nal story from the WP. Hooked on Phon­ics is not hooked on pri­vacy:

To par­ents inter­ested in buy­ing the pop­u­lar Hooked on Phon­ics learn-to-read pro­grams, the com­pany made a firm promise on its Web site: It would never sell or rent their per­sonal infor­ma­tion to other marketers.

But that pledge was empty. In the pages of a mar­ket­ing trade pub­li­ca­tion, Gate­way Learn­ing Corp., the product’s California-based par­ent com­pany, was adver­tis­ing to rent the list of Hooked on Phon­ics buy­ers to other marketers.

Tagged as: advertising, book, California, car, DRM, management, marketing, movie, privacy, technology, Washington