earticle

영어

The absolute anonymity on the Internet has gone away. Along with the emergence and the explosive growth of social networking sites, digital dossier created by aggregating personal information on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter has an effect on the person's real life counterpart. Unlike politicians, businessmen and celebrities, a general user utilize social networking sites to communicate with her "friends" who have been invited by the user based on the existing relationship, and the user does not expect her personal information on her profile, pictures, comments on a "wall" to be shared or disseminated to third parties or to the public. Therefore, if the user's personal information that is allowed only for the user's friends or a certain group of people to access has been disseminated, it can cause harm, especially with respect to individual privacy. In recent years, social networking sites have turned out to be a primary source of evidence in legal proceedings. It has become more important to determine who controls the user's privacy on social networking sites. It has been well settled that a user has no privacy interest in her personal information disclosed to the general public because the information is no longer a "private fact" that can be protected from public disclosure. When the user utilized the available privacy settings on Facebook and MySpace to restrict access to only those “friends” she wanted to share information with, the question arises as to whether the user can assert her privacy right against unauthorized disclosure of her personal information. On this issue, the courts in each coast of the U.S. have reached different conclusions. In Romano v. Steelcase, Inc., the New York court found that the user had no reasonable expectation of privacy in what she posted to her Facebook and MySpace pages, regardless of her individual privacy settings, and granted defendants access to the plaintiff’s current and historical Facebook and MySpace pages and accounts, including all deleted or archived content. In Crispin v. Audigier Inc., however, the California court recognized the difference between private messages and comments posted on a "wall" accessed by the user's "friends" or the public, and inferred the user's subjective expectation of privacy from her privacy setting. In denying the user's reasonable expectation of privacy, the New York state court reasoned that the user's personal information which the user restricted access by adjusting her privacy setting still can be accessed by the user's friends and social networking site operators. In addition, the court gave a significant weight to the fact that most social networking sites provided privacy policies and recognized that the user was informed that her personal information might be disseminated by her friends or third parties. On the other hand, the California court distinguished private messages from posting and personal information disclosed to the public, and potentially recognized the user's reasonable expectation of privacy for the personal information with restricted access. Furthermore, the privacy policy of social networking sites could be interpreted as a warning to avoid the subsequent legal liability. The existing concept of privacy and current privacy legislation are subject to the physical space. Privacy concerns and personal relationship in cyberspace are different from those in the real world. It might be required to reform the evolving privacy concept to reflect the nature of cyberspace having no walls, floor and ceiling and "shallow friendships" on social networking sites. This paper will examine the reasoning behind these decisions with respect to privacy issues on social networking, and propose solutions to privacy protection in cyberspace.