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About the book
Publisher description: Our data is besieged every day by tech companies, leading to hidden AI harms in the information economy. Companies can do this because our laws are built on outdated ideas that trap lawmakers, regulators, and courts into wrong assumptions, resulting in ineffective approaches to one of the most pressing concerns of our generation. Drawing on behavioral science, social data science, and economics, this book dispels enduring misconceptions about AI-driven interactions. Its exploration offers a view of why current regulations fail to protect us against digital harms, particularly those created by AI. The book then proposes a better response: accountability for corporate data practices. Ultimately, accountability requires creating a new type of liability system for AI harms that recognizes the social value of people’s privacy.
ISBN: 9781108995825 (online); 9781108995443 (paperback); 9781316518113 (hardcover)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108995825
The Privacy Fallacy is a nonfiction book on the myths and misconceptions about privacy in the age of AI.
Trailer
Reviews
In this superb book, Ignacio Cofone expertly threads together privacy law’s many missteps and proposes a way forward that doesn’t rest on myths and misconceptions. The Privacy Fallacy clearly and effectively stakes out an essential turning point for lawmakers and society: We either commit to holding companies liable for the full range of harms they cause, or we continue to indulge in the fantasy that privacy can be individually negotiated and that our laws have it under control."
Woodrow Hartzog - Boston University
author of Privacy's Blueprint and Breached!
With the rigor of an economist and the heart of a humanist, Cofone explores why privacy law has been disappointingly powerless in today’s data-driven society. He proposes a new understanding of privacy harm to ground a more effective liability regime. A clear and engaging read for experts and interested laypeople alike."
Katherine J. Strandburg - New York University
editor of Governing Knowledge Commons
To protect privacy in the digital age, Ignacio Cofone argues, we must rethink privacy harms. These harms are social and systemic as well as individual, and they will not be remedied by market and contractual approaches. This beautifully written book is an excellent introduction to problems of digital exploitation that affect everyone."
Jack Balkin - Yale Law School
author of Democracy and Disfunction and The Cycles of Constitutional Time
Chapter by chapter
About the author
Ignacio Cofone is the Canada Research Chair in A.I. Law & Data Governance at McGill University, where he teaches Privacy Law and AI Regulation, and an Affiliated Fellow at the Yale Law School Information Society Project. Ignacio is interested in how our laws should adapt to technological and economic change, taking a focus on data harms, privacy, and AI. His research is available open access here.
Book talks (join if you're in town or near a computer!)
April 24, noon, Montreal - Canadian Technology Law Association [hybrid; open registration here]
April 11, noon, Boston - Northeastern University School of Law, Center for Law, Information and Creativity
April 9, 11 am, St. Louis - Washington University School of Law / Cordell Institute
April 3, 2:45 pm, online - McGill Yan P Lin Centre [fully online; link here]
April 2, noon, New Haven - Yale Law School
March 20, 4 pm, Southampton - University of Southampton Law & Technology Centre
March 14, 2 pm, Naples - Università Degli Studi di Napoli L'Orientale [hybrid; link here]
March 6, 1 pm, London - Queen Mary University School of Law, Centre for Commercial Law Studies
March 4, noon, Bristol - Bristol Law School, Centre for Global Law and Innovation [hybrid; link here]
February 28, noon ET / 6 pm CET, Online - American Society of Comparative Law, Younger Comparativists Committee [online event; open registration here]
February 21, 5 pm, Oxford - Oxford Internet Institute [hybrid; link here]
February 13, 12:30, Paris - Sciences Po Law School [links here and here]
February 12, noon, Paris - Université Catholique de Lille Centre sur les relations entre les risques et le droit & AUP Center for Critical Democracy Studies [hybrid; open registration here]
January 31, noon, Dublin - Dublin City University, School of Law & Government & Institute of Ethics [hybrid; link here]
January 24, 4 pm, Toronto - BEWorks Behavioural Science Consulting
January 24, 11 am ET, Online - McGill Info Security Data Privacy Week launch [online event; open registration here]
January 18, 2 pm, Tilburg - Tilburg Institute of Law & Technology
January 16, noon, Rotterdam - Erasmus School of Law
January 8, 4 pm, Montreal - Paragraphe bookstore & McGill Faculty of Law