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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."

1 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. 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.