Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Can Blockbuster be Sued Over Facebook/Beacon?

Posted by Zonk on from the facing-the-book dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A professor at the New York Law School is arguing that Blockbuster violated the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988 when movie choices that Facebook members made on its Web site were made available to other members of the social network via Beacon. The law basically prohibits video rental outfits from disclosing rental choice of their customers to anyone else without specific written consent. Facebook's legal liability in all of this is unclear; with Blockbuster it's a straightforward case of not complying with the VPPA, the law professor says."

7 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Yes, but... by jo42 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Didn't Facebook members make their movie choices public in the first place?

    So this public information was then used by someone else.

    What be wrong with this?

    1. Re:Yes, but... by hansamurai · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yes, the users did give permission to Blockbuster to broadcast their rentals. So this is really an issue between "written consent" that the summary says and electronic consent without a hand-written signature. I would guess there's tons of precedent one way or the other, though I wouldn't know which way this would lean.

      --
      Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
    2. Re:Yes, but... by anticypher · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Beacon also uses Adobe Flash "stored data" space to write cookie style information, that can be read and written to by any site with a flash bug.

      This was the buzz all this week at a conference on how to make money from internet tracking. Adobe controls the settings on how much information can be written to your local hard drive, and they sell the ability to anyone willing to pay. There is a global setting that users can turn to "off", but Adobe ignores it if they are given enough money. Since Flash tends to be installed system-wide and on all browsers on a machine, it doesn't matter if you clear out browser cookies or try blocking tracking sites. If a partner site sticks a 1x1 pixel flash bug on their site, it has the ability to read tracking info from any other site, and to write back additional information.

      Beacon is clever because it creates a large enough "cookie" that many sites can write into the cookie without changing the size taken on disk. Beacon also defines exactly how to parse the information, and how to write new info without changing the total cookie size.

      Of course, I was just watching a canned demo of this, so the company claiming to be behind Beacon could be making it all up, but the sales pitch was pretty convincing. I haven't the time or inclination to verify this, as I don't ever look at face book, and generally don't allow flash on my machines (which leaves the web looking very poorly these days)

      the AC

      --
      Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
  2. Re:is this by syntaxeater · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Doubt it. If anything, I would guess this will be the case where they decide the term "Specific Written Consent" is synonymous with any EULA or application of your signature to a document.

  3. Privacy is why I dropped Facebook. by neo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You can't spend much time on facebook without some third party application asking for personal information. More than that the "viral" content is vicious, asking to check your various mail accounts to send requests for more people to join. This is just friendster with a new twist, but the twist is dangerous. You have no idea who you are giving up your information to. Want Big Brother? Think about how facebook looks to the CIA or NSA and now you entire social network was mapped. Not by them, but by you.

    No, I quit facebook. Deleted as much as I could before I left, but I know they still have it.

    Facebook is dangerous. Period. Go ahead and be a pirate/ninja warrior... but take a look at who wrote that ap. They get your infomation.

  4. What about Netflix? by Wordplay · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I can see my friends' rental histories on Netflix, and I'm sure they can see mine. I probably checked a box somewhere, but I don't think I consented to this sort of thing "in writing."

  5. Re:Wrong by Culture20 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You have a 5 second window to "cancel" the sending of the info, but it's worded in a way that you're forced to think about allow or deny... then it chooses on its own and sends. And... you don't get asked to confirm the post. The post happens whether you want it or not, then you are forced to remove it if you don't want it. Beacon==bad UI from a human user standpoint