But is it a case of once on the internet, forever available to anyone and everyone?
“We are all part of the media now,” says Dr Nicole Moreham from Victoria’s Faculty of Law. “It takes just a minute to record something in a photo or video and put it online.
“We are using media platforms not only to find out about the world, but also to tell our own stories. But the law recognises that sometimes the privacy cost of those activities is too high. So just because something has been posted online, that doesn’t mean it has to be on there forever, no.”
Nicole examines the legal and practical aspects of privacy protection in The Law of Privacy and the Media, which she edited with Sir Mark Warby, specialist English media High Court judge. The book was launched in both London and Wellington earlier this year.
Nicole is considered one of the world’s leading scholars of privacy. She says the new edition of the book responds to the continuing expansion of the law of privacy, including the so-called new media on social media platforms.
“It is aimed at both practitioners and academics. But internet giants like Google are increasingly finding themselves defending privacy cases, so there is likely to be interest from those quarters as well,” Nicole says.