SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS PRIVACY CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE AGE OF COPYRIGHTISATION: COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT IN THE EYES OF LAW

Abstract

This article focuses on how individuals think about privacy when they use social media and how they think about privacy policies and laws in the "age of copyrightisation." Consequently, this article looks at users' connotation of privacy as a legal dimension as a result of the "Right to be Forgotten" ruling and the Snowden revelation on mass surveillance, and the ways in which users negotiate their Internet use, particularly through social media platform like Youtube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This study uses focus group interviews to examine how social media users negotiate privacy infringement and what impact their knowledge of privacy regulations (or lack thereof) plays in their techniques of negotiation. In the first place, privacy is almost universally understood as a matter of controlling one's own data, including the disclosure of information even to friends, and is strongly connected to issues of personal autonomy; second, a form of resignation in terms of control over personal data appears to coexist with a recognized need to protect one's private data, while respondents describe conscious attempts to circumvent systems of monetization. Although privacy legal problems have been widely discussed in the news media, respondents' worries about "self-protection" techniques are mostly based on their own personal experiences with legal and privacy breaches.