How we do stop fame forever and get everybody a bit of privacy?

[carolinech]

How can we protect the concept of privacy? Not just for the living but also for the dead. It is a very important ideal and one I think respecting individual's privacy should be a the heart of a healthy society. It always strikes me as deeply morally dubious when crime writers for example write books about people accusing them of being Jack The Ripper or similar years after they?ve died and they can no longer defend themselves. It seems a very easy way to make money, but hardly fair on their families or those they?ve put in the frame. It also seems to rather just smack of being an easy way to make money. Similarly when posthumous albums are released of musicians. You often suspect they would never have wanted to see their ?barrel scrapings? to see the light of the day. Perhaps there seems some valid argument to say Jim Morrison or Jim Hendrix at least pursued fame when they were alive. Only recently I read that Nick Drake?s mother is to have an album of her music released. It would be very difficult to argue convincingly and without doubt that she would have ever wanted what was a personal hobby to become part of the public arena. There?s the Socrates quote of fame being the perfume of being heroic deeds. So perhaps there could be a few, very few people who should become famous in this day ? but by and large, wouldn?t we be better by cultivating a society that rejects the concept of fame and protects the privacy. Haven?t we got enough records, books and films to all read now? I imagine most of us would like to rest easy that we will never become famous without fully signing up to it ? not now and not when we?re six feet under. And perhaps laws need to be enshrined to make things this way.