What the publisher can teach the patient: Intellectual property and privacy in an era of trusted privication

This article begins with a premise that intellectual property and privacy h ave something significant and yet understated in common: both are about bal ancing a creator's desire to control a particular set of data with consumer s desires to access and redistribute that data. Both law and technology inf luence such balancing, making it more or less palatable to use data for par ticular purposes-whether one is an individual making a copy of a popular so ng for a friend, or a hospital selling a list of maternity ward patients to a day care service. In the shadow of the Intetnet's vapid development and concomitant easing of barriers to data sharing, holders of intellectual pro perty are pairing increased legal protection with the technologies of "trus ted systems." I describe how these technologies might allow more thorough m ass distribution of data, while allowing publishers to retain unprecedented control over their wares. For instance, an e-Book seller might charge one price for a read-only copy that could not be printed or forwarded and charg e an additional fee for each copy or printout made. Taking up the case of m edical privacy, I then suggest that those who worry about the confidentiali ty of medical records, particularly as they are digitized by recent congres sional mandate, might seek to augment comparatively paltry legal protection s with trusted systems technologies. For instance, a trusted system could a llow a patient to specify how and by whom her records could be used; within limits, she could allow full access to her primary care physician, while a llowing only time-limited access to emergency care providers, non-personall y identifiable access to medical researchers, and no access at all for mark eting purposes. These technologies could allow for new kinds of privacy pro tection, without sacrificing the legitimate interests of the consumers of m edical records.