In Cooper v Stockett, a plaintiff unsuccessfully claimed that a central character in the 2009 nov... more In Cooper v Stockett, a plaintiff unsuccessfully claimed that a central character in the 2009 novel The Help was based on her and that the depiction caused her emotional harm. By analyzing the documents filed by the parties, this article argues that the plaintiff is best understood primarily as a reader. From this perspective, the relationship between plaintiff and defendant parallels that between reader and author on several levels. The plaintiff-reader uses both textual and extratextual information to judge the author’s moral fibre, especially her level of commitment to anti-racism, and attempts to engage the law to address what are essentially moral wrongs linked to race and representation. Textually, how the White author deploys literary strategies to convey moral messages within the novel generates a sense of moral dissonance in the Black plaintiff-reader, and extratextual factors, such as interviews with the author and legal arguments advanced by the defence team, work to exacerbate that sense of dissonance, undergirding the plaintiff’s conviction that she has been wronged. While the substantive law of personality rights and invasion of privacy are not particularly sympathetic to her project, the procedural process of the lawsuit nonetheless provides a forum for it.
In 2010, first-year Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi surreptitiously used his webcam to obs... more In 2010, first-year Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi surreptitiously used his webcam to observe his roommate, Tyler Clementi, having a sexual encounter with another man in the dorm room they shared. Criminal charges laid against Ravi included four counts of invasion of privacy, each enhanced by bias intimidation on the basis of Clementi’s sexual orientation. He denied all charges and refused a plea deal, publicly insisting that he did not harbour any prejudice against gay people. As the..
R v Ward was the third recent Canadian appellate court decision on warrantless police access to i... more R v Ward was the third recent Canadian appellate court decision on warrantless police access to internet customer names and addresses. All three cases involved unsuccessful claims under section 8 of the Charter. Ward’s claim failed because the cooperation by his internet service provider (ISP) with police was held to be reasonable, defeating the reasonableness of his expectation of privacy.In an era marked by increasing pressure on private actors to participate in law enforcement, the stakes are high for the future of online privacy protection under the Charter. The author argues that the Ontario Court of Appeal’s approach in Ward, while promising, must be further developed in order to protect the democratic values at the heart of section 8. Ward deserves credit for allowing private actors to consider both their customers’ privacy and their own interests in assisting law enforcement. The Court of Appeal’s analysis of the triangular relationship between police, defendant and ISP set ...
The purpose of this qualitative study was to obtain youth perspectives on consensual and non-cons... more The purpose of this qualitative study was to obtain youth perspectives on consensual and non-consensual sexting. We began this study on young people’s (12–19) sexting practices in a large urban center. Before the study was put on pause due to COVID-19 physical distancing measures, we conducted 12 focus groups with 62 participants (47 girls, 15 boys). A key finding was that many girls had received unsolicited sexts (e.g., “dick pics”) or unwanted requests for sexts. Analysis revealed four interconnected themes: (1) unsolicited sexts; (2) unwanted requests for sexts; (3) complexity associated with saying “no”; and (4) general lack of adult support. Using our findings from before COVID-19, we discuss the potential impact of COVID-19 on teens’ sexting experiences and outline the ways in which social workers and other mental health practitioners can support adolescents and their parents in navigating this new context of sexting during and beyond the global pandemic.
The article examines how images of home internet access have informed two prominent strands in th... more The article examines how images of home internet access have informed two prominent strands in the development of anti-spam law, namely property-based and autonomy rights-based approaches. Through a comparison of legislative and common law attempts to legally articulate and address the wrongs inflicted by unsolicited bulk email in both the United States and Canada, the article traces slow and halting progress away from an exclusively property-based approach to one which considers part of the wrong to be the invasion of the personal autonomy rights of spam recipients. The internet-connected home thereby becomes a visual stand-in for the less materially bound personal space within which an individual can exert a right not to receive unwanted messages. Solutions able to address this right directly are therefore most capable of getting at the underlying popular complaint against spam, while validating a larger cultural trend toward more portable notions of privacy.
The article takes the example of cross-jurisdictional defamation cases to examine how the idea of... more The article takes the example of cross-jurisdictional defamation cases to examine how the idea of the Internet's "borderlessness" has spawned various narratives about the consequences of finding for or against defendants in these cases. The paper argues that the rhetorical functions of these narratives must be evaluated in relation to the legal principles called upon in each specific case, rather than allowing a particular narrative to hold sway more generally.
In 2010, first-year Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi surreptitiously used his webcam to obs... more In 2010, first-year Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi surreptitiously used his webcam to observe his roommate, Tyler Clementi, having a sexual encounter with another man in the dorm room they shared. Criminal charges laid against Ravi included four counts of invasion of privacy, each enhanced by bias intimidation on the basis of Clementi's sexual orientation. He denied all charges and refused a plea deal, publicly insisting that he did not harbour any prejudice against gay people. As the case proceeded to court, the defence filed a series of motions attempting to have the case dismissed, arguing that the evidence did not support the charges, especially those regarding bias. This motion record contains a large quantity of online communications evidence. This chapter elaborates on legal arguments put forward by the defence in relation to the bias intimidation charges, focusing on how the online communications evidence operates in relation to the parties' efforts to deny o...
The Canadian approach to privacy rights in one’s body is embedded in the relationship between int... more The Canadian approach to privacy rights in one’s body is embedded in the relationship between interests in privacy, bodily integrity, and human dignity. Clarifying these interests is complicated by Canada’s middle-ground stance between the European “dignity-based” approach to privacy and the American “liberty-based” orientation. The Canadian approach is closest to the European model when intrusions upon the body are conceived as wholly or mostly non-consensual (e.g., strip searches, voyeurism, and most child pornography). However, once consent plays a potentially determinative role, the liberty-based approach gains ground. This reluctance to fully align dignity with privacy results in confusion about the scope of ongoing privacy interests in nude images, as evidenced by recent debates about the use of airport body-image scanners and the appropriate response to adolescent “sexting.” The author argues that a clearer alignment with a dignity-based approach emerging in Canadian child po...
In Cooper v Stockett, a plaintiff unsuccessfully claimed that a central character in the 2009 nov... more In Cooper v Stockett, a plaintiff unsuccessfully claimed that a central character in the 2009 novel The Help was based on her and that the depiction caused her emotional harm. By analyzing the documents filed by the parties, this article argues that the plaintiff is best understood primarily as a reader. From this perspective, the relationship between plaintiff and defendant parallels that between reader and author on several levels. The plaintiff-reader uses both textual and extratextual information to judge the author’s moral fibre, especially her level of commitment to anti-racism, and attempts to engage the law to address what are essentially moral wrongs linked to race and representation. Textually, how the White author deploys literary strategies to convey moral messages within the novel generates a sense of moral dissonance in the Black plaintiff-reader, and extratextual factors, such as interviews with the author and legal arguments advanced by the defence team, work to exacerbate that sense of dissonance, undergirding the plaintiff’s conviction that she has been wronged. While the substantive law of personality rights and invasion of privacy are not particularly sympathetic to her project, the procedural process of the lawsuit nonetheless provides a forum for it.
In 2010, first-year Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi surreptitiously used his webcam to obs... more In 2010, first-year Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi surreptitiously used his webcam to observe his roommate, Tyler Clementi, having a sexual encounter with another man in the dorm room they shared. Criminal charges laid against Ravi included four counts of invasion of privacy, each enhanced by bias intimidation on the basis of Clementi’s sexual orientation. He denied all charges and refused a plea deal, publicly insisting that he did not harbour any prejudice against gay people. As the..
R v Ward was the third recent Canadian appellate court decision on warrantless police access to i... more R v Ward was the third recent Canadian appellate court decision on warrantless police access to internet customer names and addresses. All three cases involved unsuccessful claims under section 8 of the Charter. Ward’s claim failed because the cooperation by his internet service provider (ISP) with police was held to be reasonable, defeating the reasonableness of his expectation of privacy.In an era marked by increasing pressure on private actors to participate in law enforcement, the stakes are high for the future of online privacy protection under the Charter. The author argues that the Ontario Court of Appeal’s approach in Ward, while promising, must be further developed in order to protect the democratic values at the heart of section 8. Ward deserves credit for allowing private actors to consider both their customers’ privacy and their own interests in assisting law enforcement. The Court of Appeal’s analysis of the triangular relationship between police, defendant and ISP set ...
The purpose of this qualitative study was to obtain youth perspectives on consensual and non-cons... more The purpose of this qualitative study was to obtain youth perspectives on consensual and non-consensual sexting. We began this study on young people’s (12–19) sexting practices in a large urban center. Before the study was put on pause due to COVID-19 physical distancing measures, we conducted 12 focus groups with 62 participants (47 girls, 15 boys). A key finding was that many girls had received unsolicited sexts (e.g., “dick pics”) or unwanted requests for sexts. Analysis revealed four interconnected themes: (1) unsolicited sexts; (2) unwanted requests for sexts; (3) complexity associated with saying “no”; and (4) general lack of adult support. Using our findings from before COVID-19, we discuss the potential impact of COVID-19 on teens’ sexting experiences and outline the ways in which social workers and other mental health practitioners can support adolescents and their parents in navigating this new context of sexting during and beyond the global pandemic.
The article examines how images of home internet access have informed two prominent strands in th... more The article examines how images of home internet access have informed two prominent strands in the development of anti-spam law, namely property-based and autonomy rights-based approaches. Through a comparison of legislative and common law attempts to legally articulate and address the wrongs inflicted by unsolicited bulk email in both the United States and Canada, the article traces slow and halting progress away from an exclusively property-based approach to one which considers part of the wrong to be the invasion of the personal autonomy rights of spam recipients. The internet-connected home thereby becomes a visual stand-in for the less materially bound personal space within which an individual can exert a right not to receive unwanted messages. Solutions able to address this right directly are therefore most capable of getting at the underlying popular complaint against spam, while validating a larger cultural trend toward more portable notions of privacy.
The article takes the example of cross-jurisdictional defamation cases to examine how the idea of... more The article takes the example of cross-jurisdictional defamation cases to examine how the idea of the Internet's "borderlessness" has spawned various narratives about the consequences of finding for or against defendants in these cases. The paper argues that the rhetorical functions of these narratives must be evaluated in relation to the legal principles called upon in each specific case, rather than allowing a particular narrative to hold sway more generally.
In 2010, first-year Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi surreptitiously used his webcam to obs... more In 2010, first-year Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi surreptitiously used his webcam to observe his roommate, Tyler Clementi, having a sexual encounter with another man in the dorm room they shared. Criminal charges laid against Ravi included four counts of invasion of privacy, each enhanced by bias intimidation on the basis of Clementi's sexual orientation. He denied all charges and refused a plea deal, publicly insisting that he did not harbour any prejudice against gay people. As the case proceeded to court, the defence filed a series of motions attempting to have the case dismissed, arguing that the evidence did not support the charges, especially those regarding bias. This motion record contains a large quantity of online communications evidence. This chapter elaborates on legal arguments put forward by the defence in relation to the bias intimidation charges, focusing on how the online communications evidence operates in relation to the parties' efforts to deny o...
The Canadian approach to privacy rights in one’s body is embedded in the relationship between int... more The Canadian approach to privacy rights in one’s body is embedded in the relationship between interests in privacy, bodily integrity, and human dignity. Clarifying these interests is complicated by Canada’s middle-ground stance between the European “dignity-based” approach to privacy and the American “liberty-based” orientation. The Canadian approach is closest to the European model when intrusions upon the body are conceived as wholly or mostly non-consensual (e.g., strip searches, voyeurism, and most child pornography). However, once consent plays a potentially determinative role, the liberty-based approach gains ground. This reluctance to fully align dignity with privacy results in confusion about the scope of ongoing privacy interests in nude images, as evidenced by recent debates about the use of airport body-image scanners and the appropriate response to adolescent “sexting.” The author argues that a clearer alignment with a dignity-based approach emerging in Canadian child po...
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