Privacy commissioner: Stop claiming 'foul play'

Australia's federal privacy commissioner has questioned whether privacy rights are being ignored in the push to protect digital rights.

Malcolm Crompton, federal privacy commissioner, used his address at the 11th Biennial Copyright Law and Practice Symposium to call for software pirates and the digital industry to stop claiming "foul play" against each other.

"I challenge both the digital industry and software pirates to recognise that digital rights management includes both the right of protection for intellectual property and the right of protection for personal information," Crompton argued.

He called for owners of intellectual property to demonstrate transparently whether and when digital rights management technologies allowed fine-grained customer profiling. He also said that individuals should have the choice to not participate.

"This includes the need for new technologies to be consciously designed as privacy enhancing technologies that prevent accumulation of such data for this kind of secondary purpose," according to a statement from Crompton's office.