Kylie Potuznik, a student in Jon Pfeiffer’s Fall 2012 Mass Communication Law class at Pepperdine University, wrote the following essay in response to the question: “As a college student, what privacy rights do you expect on campus? In the classroom? In your dorm room?”

Privacy is not a word that my mother seems to have in her personal dictionary. I grew up in a home where I was extremely monitored, and no matter how hard I tried my mother somehow always…

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Jon Pfeiffer is an experienced entertainment and copyright trial attorney practicing in Santa Monica. Jon is also an adjunct professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California where he teaches Media Law. COM 570 covers First Amendment issues as well as copyright, defamation and privacy.  

Everyone has secrets. Stated the way a court would describe the same thing - everyone has facts that they don’t want the public to know. Within the law of privacy the Courts recognize that some secrets deserve protection and provide a remedy for the publication of private facts.

To prevail on a claim for the disclosure of private facts a plaintiff must prove that a private fact, not of legitimate concern, has been communicated to the public and the publication is highly offensive to…