This week (May 1-7) is Choose Privacy Week. Today being the 7th, I’m a little late to the game, though I do read articles, blog posts, and infographics about privacy all year round. Two recent examples are Fight for the Future’s great infographic about CISPA, and the EFF’s annual “Who Has Your Back?” report about which companies protect user data from the government.

At ChoosePrivacyWeek.org, ALA has links to a curated collection of videos on the topic of privacy. Visit the Video Gallery to explore; so far I’ve only watched “Facebook Killed the Private Life” featuring Clay Shirky, which at just over four minutes is a good jumping-off point (“Social networks are profoundly changing the definition of what we consider private”). The Choose Privacy Week documentary (see below) is also a good place to start; at 23 minutes, it’s an excellent and thought-provoking overview of the topic, including commentary from Neil Gaiman and Cory Doctorow, as well as many librarians.

By the way, if you’re wondering what the orange shape on the poster is – lamb chop? Video game controller? – it is a birds-eye view of a person walking.

Privacy is such a huge topic, there are many different aspects to it. But watching the documentary, I was reminded of an article I read in the Guardian a while ago, “Why ebooks are a different genre from print.” I have heard enough rhapsodizing about the smell of books vs. soulless electronic devices, but this article puts that argument aside in favor of a few real and important differences between print books and e-books. Author Stuart Kelly writes, “There are two aspects to the ebook that seem to me profoundly to alter the relationship between the reader and the text. With the book, the reader’s relationship to the text is private, and the book is continuous over space, time and reader. Neither of these propositions is necessarily the case with the ebook.” If you’re reading on a Kindle, you’re telling Amazon what you’re buying, what you’re reading, how long you spend on each page, where you stop reading, what you highlight, and where you make notes. Amazon has also shown it has the capability to “disappear” legally purchased books from your device, and also the capability – though I don’t know if they’ve used it yet – to make changes to books you already “own,” like pushing publishers’ corrections to your first edition file.

That is only one small example of how our privacy is eroding, sometimes without our awareness, sometimes without our consent. In light of this erosion, the Choose Privacy Week documentary I mentioned above is definitely worth watching. As I watched, I couldn’t help scribbling down quotes:

“Facebook is a conditioning system to teach you to undervalue your privacy…[it] rewards you for foolish disclosure.” -Author Cory Doctorow

“It is not for us to judge why a person wants to know something.” -Librarian Sarah Pritchard, Northwestern University

“Do not put anything on the web, at all, ever, that you would not want anybody, be it your mother, your boss, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your girlfriend’s mother, to see.” -Author Neil Gaiman

“Privacy is one of the greatest privileges that we have. Privileges, rights – both.”

People who are “in the public eye all the time,” whose private lives are documented in magazines, tabloids, and the internet, who can’t go anywhere without being accosted by paparazzi, reporters, or fans. Fame often comes at the cost of privacy, and yet so many of us put personal information on the internet where it is available to anyone who cares to look. It’s not just “you and a screen,” it’s you and the whole world. So ask yourself: What is your privacy worth?