"If social norms were fences, [Helen Nissenbaum] said, "any ethical, law-abiding person won't step over the fence." In the absence of data-usage laws or norms [...] some tech companies feel unconstrained about using information in new ways that can seem creepy."
And that's one of the major pain points of 'enforcing' privacy online for users. Together with all the 'global' sets of laws that are needed and need to be enforceable throughout the internet (the EU Data Protection[1] being one of the steps in the right direction), it's painful to see that the legal system can't keep up (once again[2]) with 'the free Internet'.
[2] It's another side of the spectrum of enforcing laws and norms on the Internet, users paying with their 'personal information' for 'free' services, besides all the anti-piracy efforts of the mpaa and such.
And that's one of the major pain points of 'enforcing' privacy online for users. Together with all the 'global' sets of laws that are needed and need to be enforceable throughout the internet (the EU Data Protection[1] being one of the steps in the right direction), it's painful to see that the legal system can't keep up (once again[2]) with 'the free Internet'.
[1] http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/index_en.htm
[2] It's another side of the spectrum of enforcing laws and norms on the Internet, users paying with their 'personal information' for 'free' services, besides all the anti-piracy efforts of the mpaa and such.