The Centre for Global Law and Innovation will welcome Ignacio Cofone  on 4th March 2024, 12:00 - 13:00, to present his book entitled: "The Privacy Fallacy: Harm and Power in the Information Economy"

Our privacy is besieged by tech companies. Companies can do this because our laws are built on outdated ideas that trap lawmakers, regulators, and courts into wrong assumptions about privacy, resulting in ineffective legal remedies to one of the most pressing concerns of our generation. Drawing on behavioral science, sociology, and economics, in The Privacy Fallacy: Harm and Power in the Information Economy, Ignacio Cofone challenges existing laws and reform proposals and dispels enduring misconceptions about data-driven interactions. This exploration offers readers a holistic view of why current laws and regulations fail to protect us against corporate digital harms, particularly those created by AI. Cofone then proposes a better response: meaningful accountability for the consequences of corporate data practices, which ultimately entails creating a new type of liability that recognizes the value of privacy.

The book argues that privacy law is implicitly grounded on concepts from contracts, which set the rules for voluntary agreements, and we need to instead ground it on concepts from torts, which set the rules for harms caused to others. Departing from existing regulations and proposals, it proposes a plan to build accountability into the information economy for individual and group harms.

About the Speaker: Ignacio Cofone is the Canada Research Chair of Artificial Intelligence Law & Data Governance at McGill University Faculty of Law and an Affiliated Fellow at the Yale Law School Information Society Project.