Broadcasting Privacy

Historically, telecommunications and broadcasting have been seen as distinct activities; so too the way they each engage privacy concerns. Telecommunications, with its private content and identifiable participants, falls within the sphere of privacy; broadcasting consumption has traditionally fallen at the other end of the scale, characterised as both public and anonymous. The article examines the extent to which an individual's interaction with broadcasting systems is treated differently from their use of other forms of electronic communications in privacy terms. It argues that some legacy rules and outmoded assumptions about the nature of broadcasting mean that the privacy implications of the process of its consumption have not been fully considered or adequately addressed in law.