“Personal relationships in the Year 2000: Me and My ISP” in No Person Is an Island: Personal Relationships of Dependence and Independence (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2002).
This chapter explores the nature of the legal relationship between the Internet user and service provider by examining that relationship as a special instance of a relationship of dependence. After illustrating the incredible power that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) hold over their user’s informational privacy online, I look at the contractual underpinning of ISP-User relations. Part of my aim was to survey the broad range of ISP-user relationships and the varying degrees of confidentiality promised by ISPs. I also explored how legislative safe harbours that require ISPs to comply with law enforcement limit online confidentiality and run the risk of chilling free expression. Next, I examine dependence and interdependence in ISP-User relationships through an application of social exchange theory and law’s concept of the “fiduciary relationship.” By casting its focus on the informational imbalance between the parties rather than the more familiar types of power imbalances (e.g., inequalities based on economics, social status, physical strength, and expertise), the Chapter seeks to provide a more robust understanding of what it is that makes a relationship one of dependence in order to assist law reformers in determining whether the relationship between Internet user and service provider is, or ought to be, governed by anything other than the contractual arrangements between the parties or the minimal requirements of enacted privacy legislation.
