Social networking sites undermine privacy: US judge

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A high ranking US judge says social networking sites such as Facebook are putting everyone’s privacy at risk. Judge Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, has presided over a copyright dispute involving the founders of Facebook.

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TANYA NOLAN: A high-ranking US judge says social networking sites such as Facebook are putting everyone’s privacy at risk. And he should know – Judge Alex Kozinski, presided over a copyright dispute involving the founders of Facebook.

But the chief judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has had his own personal, humiliating brush with the internet’s privacy traps. A few years ago, Judge Kozinski posted private photos and videos which then became public.

Sue Lannin caught up with Judge Kozinski and she prepared this report.

(Extract from movie The Social Network)

ACTOR: People want to go on the internet and check out their friends so why not build a website that offers that friends, pictures, profiles

(End extract)

SUE LANNIN: A scene from the movie The Social Network about the creation of Facebook. The social networking website says it has more than 750 million active users. It’s obviously popular but some like US Appeals Court judge, Alex Kozinski, think sites like Facebook are undermining privacy.

ALEX KOZINKSI: It used to be that people would have conversations about their intimate lives and they would keep them private, they would be by telephone perhaps or write in a diary. Now they put them on their pages, on their social network websites like Facebook and MySpace and they just happy to share them with the public and what that does, it lowers the expectation of privacy for all of us,

SUE LANNIN: A lot of it, particularly younger generations, they are very comfortable with having their private lives posted online so doesn’t that just indicate that society is changing?

ALEX KOZINKSI: It does indicate it is changing in some ways and perhaps not for the better. Sometimes we do things when we are in our teens that we regret later on. We don’t fully appreciate the consequences.

SUE LANNIN: Privacy is a subject that Judge Kozinski knows all too well. In 2008 he was publicly humiliated after sexually explicit photos and video he posted on a private website become public.

ALEX KOZINKSI: I should have been more careful. I believe that we are all subject to invasions of privacy.

SUE LANNIN: So it’s a cautionary tale for all of us?

ALEX KOZINKSI: I think so.

SUE LANNIN: Despite the scandal Judge Kozinski has his fans including the Facebook page ‘The Judge Kozinski Appreciation Society’ which states:

EXTRACT FROM WEBSITE: The honourable Judge Alex Kozinski has won supporters from the left and the right with his common-sense decisions and libertarian instinct.

SUE LANNIN: Judge Kozinski was nominated to the bench by former US president Ronald Reagan – before that served as assistant counsel at the White House. He’s now the chief judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth District, which hears appeals from local courts.

(Extract from movie The Social Network)

ACTOR: He stole our website.

ACTOR 2: They’re saying we stole the Facebook.

ACTOR: I know what it says. So did we?

(End extract)

Judge Kozinski has presided over landmark intellectual property cases including the dispute between Facebook founders Mark Zuckerberg and Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.

ALEX KOZINKSI: The legal issues actually were quite mundane. The question I was faced with is whether the Winklevoss brothers would be allowed to reneg on their settlement agreement having agreed to settle their case with Facebook for a portion of the stock.

It was an interesting legal issue but I think in the great scheme of things, it was nothing terribly exotic. It was just a straightforward dispute. We get those all the time involving very famous people.

SUE LANNIN: Judge Kozinksi says the global power of the internet makes it increasingly difficult to protect copyright and that could stifle creativity.

ALEX KOZINKSI: When you have technology now where somebody can make a copy of a song and allow it to be copied for free or for nothing at all, giving the copyright holder no royalties. Of course the consequence is that if you can’t sell your product and people are going to be less likely to be creative.

SUE LANNIN: Despite his preference for freedom of information, Judge Kozinski thinks the jury is still out on the whistleblower website WikiLeaks and its leaking of top-secret diplomatic cables.

The full collection of cables has now been revealed online unedited in a major security breach for WikiLeaks.

ALEX KOZINKSI: In general though I do believe that there are secrets that the government can and should keep. It is certainly impossible to wage a war while having all of one’s military secrets revealed to the enemy.

I don’t know whether you remember the Pentagon papers case. What happened in that case is a consultant for the defence department released papers to the New York Times and the government went to court and got an injunction. Today that would not be possible.

SUE LANNIN: Is that a good or bad thing?

ALEX KOZINKSI: To some extent the government keeps too many secrets and I think it is a good thing that it is possible to release some materials but I do think if taken to an extreme, it can put people’s lives in danger.

TANYA NOLAN: That’s US Appeals Court judge, Alex Kozinski, speaking there to Sue Lannin.

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