Who Owns Information? From Privacy to Public Access.

• Author: Holliday, Taylor

Ah, the Information Frontier. The excitement, the intrigue and the power of its possibilities hold us in its spell. Few can resist the opportunity to stake a claim on the information frontier - to feel oneself akin to the settlers of the Wild West or the explorers of space, conquering the unknown. Yet the frontier of the 1990s is of an entirely new dimension, where international mail can be exchanged instantaneously, where one can own a globally portable telephone number for life and where one can literally communicate to the television what one wants to see or buy. But let us not forget the dark side of the frontier. This is a place without law and order, where anyone can find out anything and everything about another, where photographs can lie and where satellite broadcasts can render national borders obsolete - and where there is nothing the individual or the state can do about it.

This is the flag that Anne Wells Branscomb attempts to raise on the frontier in Who Owns Information? From Privacy to Public Access. As a communications and computer lawyer, she is concerned with the legal consequences of the current rush toward new information technology.[1] Although her book is a bit dense at times (readers may want to skip the section on who owns religious information unless they have an insatiable interest in the squabbles over the Dead Sea Scrolls), Branscomb succeeds in unfurling that yellow flag on the information frontier.

The fact that technology is changing almost daily means that it is always one step, or in many cases miles, ahead of the law. Are you aware, for example, that if you make your opinions known on the Internet, your medical health known to an insurance company or your address known to the post office, there are no laws to regulate just what might happen to this information, who will have access to it or how it will be used?

Fearing that we are not adequately aware of these dangers, Branscomb has written this book to temper our enthusiasm with a bit of realism about the pitfalls of the information age and to urge us to take an active part in articulating the rights and responsibilities that accompany it. Her ultimate concern is that, at the dizzying heights of technology, business will ignore its responsibilities and individuals will not know about, or will not fight for, their rights. Branscomb also cautions that some individuals are violating intellectual property protection and distorting the marketplace for information. Yet, despite her vigilant watch over the trade-offs among individual...