‘Reputation bankruptcy,’ and other ideas to protect yourself in a digital world

You’ve got something you want taken offline: a drunken Facebook photo, an ill-advised blog post about your flirtation with Satanism, a frustrated tweet you wish you could take back. As Facebook passes its 500 millionth user, we take a look at new proposals to reduce the threat that we users of the internet pose to ourselves.

George Washington University Law Professor Jeff Rosen has chronicled some of the newest proposals for protecting, and erasing, your online reputation. He joins us to talk about his recent piece, “The Web Means the End of Forgetting,” in this week’s New York Times Magazine.

And Jonathan Zittrain, of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, shares one possible solution to cleaning up the trails we leave behind us online: Reputation Bankruptcy.