International Law

Last week Duncan Riley lamented the end of privacy:

A new first for Ustream.tv and possibly the net, a birth was streamed live to the world today from West Pennsylvania. At the time of writing I can?t find a recording of the birth, with only a video of the child post delivery available, but from all accounts the whole thing was shown.

This is the end. To quote Jim Morrison:

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
Ill never look into your eyes?again

We have reached the point where nothing left is sacred, where our most intimate moments are now fair game for the world at large.

...

We have reached the point of no return. From Twittering a birth to streaming it live, the floodgates are open. Where there is a willing audience, there will be those willing to expose themselves to the world at large, and as our lust for knowing and seeing all continues, so to will the frequency of everything exposed online.

The remaining question for those in social media is whether we embrace the change and ride the wave, or we rally against it. Where today is the line between privacy and sharing? Does sharing some things open the door to sharing all, or is there still a place for what perhaps can be described as antique ideas of private moments.

What ever the answers, remember September 2, 2008 as the day that the last remaining barrier came down between personal and public. The tipping point where a sea of copycats and unrestricted life streaming that will now surely follow

Read more here (The Inquisitr).  Although this is an extraordinary story, I think it is an exaggeration to say that this is the end of privacy.  It does, however, represent a phenomenon I've been observing for some time, namely that society's conception of privacy is changing.  Digital natives (and the older, early adopter crowd) don't seem to value or protect their privacy in the same way that people did a generation ago.  Now you can argue whether this is a good or a bad thing, but ultimately that debate is beside the point as the real challenge this trend presents is the need for our laws to reflect these new notions of privacy.  Rather than desperately trying to cling to an outdated concept of what privacy is and impose outdated legal and moral standards on younger generations, our laws and moral judgments need to adapt to this new paradigm.