Privacy rights, legal problems, and paths to justice

• Author: Lesley A. Jacobs
• Pages: 1-15

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PRIVACY RIGHTS, LEGAL PROBLEMS,

AND PATHS TO JUSTICE

A. INTRODUCTION

Today, in their everyday lives, younger Canadia ns experience threats to

their privacy rights that were not faced by their parents or grandparents

a generation ago. Using social networking sites such as Facebook includes

the risk that their private personal information will be shared involuntar-

ily among their friends and peers — and anonymous corporations around

the world. Playing virtua l-world games online exposes them to new forms

of advertising and marketing that are adjusted to reect the individual

choices and behaviour they display as players during a game. If they are

cyberbullied, t heir sense of self is threatened; cyberbully ing is the catalyst

for suicides, in part, because the teenage v ictims are unable to hide from ag-

gression by other members of their virtual c ommunities. is book focuses

on the diculties Canadian youth face with privacy rights mobilization

and how they resolve the privacy-oriented legal problems that stem from

social networking, v irtual-world gaming, and cyberbullying.

e research framework presents the paths to justice for resolving legal

problems arising from violations of privacy rights of Canadian youth on a

continuum. At one extreme, paths to justice can be informal a nd exible,

largely outside the realm of government. Primary responsibility for resolv-

ing the legal problems rests on individuals and private-sector businesses

and organizations. In the midd le of the continuum are paths to justice that

rely on proactive government regulation and corresponding regulatory

agencies. Governments and policy makers assume primary responsibility

for helping people to resolve their legal problems. At the other extreme, the

paths to justice involve the formal justice system, perhaps most formally

the crimina l justice system. Legal problems are addressed in an adversarial