For My Eyes Only: How to Protect Digital Diaries of Reproductive Data in a World Without Roe
Carolyn Zaccaro In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade with its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, leaving many individuals anxious about the future of their privacy rights. With millions of people using period-tracking apps, there is a massive amount of sensitive data at stake, including data that criminal prosecutors could use to criminalize people for seeking or having an abortion. Some people are better protected because of their home state’s data privacy legislation, but most Americans are left with no data privacy law protecting their sensitive data. In an era of sophisticated tracking technology, the absence of comprehensive...
Misunderstanding RAM: Digital Embodiments and Copyright
Kristen J. Mathews In the opinion of the United States federal courts, digital software embodied in a computer’s Random Access Memory (RAM) is sufficiently fixed to constitute a “reproduction” under the Copyright Act. As a reproduction, the creation of the RAM embodiment, or the loading of software into RAM, is a potential copyright infringement. However, a close reading of the Act and its legislative history reveals that a digital work embodied in RAM should not be considered a reproduction of the work. Furthermore, including digital works embodied in RAM as reproductions is a poor fit in light of the policy...