Judge Alex Kozinski is a Romanian American jurist. He is currently Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and a popular essayist and judicial opinion–writer. Unfortunately for him, is has been discover – big surprise! – that he has accesed pornographic materials on the web.

Here are the facts of the “case” as laid out by Larry Lessig:

For at least a month, a disgruntled litigant, angry at Judge Kozinski (and the Ninth Circuit) has been talking to the media to try to smear Kozinski. Kozinski had sent a link to a file (unrelated to the stuff being reported about) that was stored on a file server maintained by Kozinski’s son, Yale. From that link (and a mistake in how the server was configured), it was possible to determine the directory structure for the server. From that directory structure, it was possible to see likely interesting places to peer. The disgruntled sort did that, and shopped some of what he found to the news sources that are now spreading it.

As Lessig in my opinion rightly points out, the smear campaign that Kozinski has been subjected to in the media including new media such as blogs is basically an example of how someones fundamental right of privacy has been violated.

As far as the story goes no one dispute that Kozinski has not stored or accessed illegal materials such as child pornography. We are only talking about completely legal stuff (baring that there might be copyright infringements involved but that is beside the point), albeit stuff that we all wouuld consider very private or personal.

As Lessig puts it:

Because this is in many ways the essence of privacy. Not the right to commit a crime (though sometimes it has that effect). But the right not to have to defend yourself about stuff you keep private. If the trespasser found a Playboy on the table in the den, the proper response is not to publish an article reporting this fact, and then shift the burden to the home owner to defend the presence of the Playboy (a legal publication, harmless in the eyes of some, scandalous in the eyes of others). The proper response is to give the private party the benefit of privacy: which is, here at least, the right not to have to explain.

Another point is however that the more is it exposed into the public that everyone or a majority of the population – male or female – stores or access pornographic materials (which statistically must be the case, if the Internet traffic data are correct) the less a taboo the whole thing becomes. But this is besides the point with respect to the Kozinski mess.

Technorati Tags:
dataprotection, larrylessig, privacy, alexkozinski