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Can Blockbuster be Sued Over Facebook/Beacon?
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."
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?
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.
What exactly has changed since 1988 that should make this law different?
If the law says that this information must be kept private, the internet and computers don't make it any less private.
Rather, the newfound popularity of the internet and computers should make privacy even more important, because once information is released, it spreads far more quickly and easily.
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.
The only reason the VPPA exists is because the video records of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork were leaked. To this day, the act of invading the privacy of a politician for political advantage is called "borking".
Bork's video rentals were unremarkable, so there were no skeletons in Bork's closet. But from that day on, every Senator and Congressman knew that their video rental histories were also subject to exposure to news agencies, and Washington acted to protect itself. If you've got something to hide, you've got plenty to fear, and Washington was evidently so terrified that they made the VPPA apply to regular citizens, not just politicians.
The only way we're going to get a pro-privacy law out of the government is for some enterprising hacker to leak the clickstream of everyone in the government about 20 years from now. Today, that won't work -- because 99% of government officials don't even use the "series of tubes", let alone depend on it for their gay hookers and pr0n. 20 years from now, that will have changed, and a similar Bork-style scandal will erupt. Just imagine the kinds of privacy laws we'd have if someone like Sen. Larry "I'm Not Gay" Craig (R-estroom) had been bound for higher office, NSA leaked their logs of his Intertube traffic.
We know when you've been sleeping,
We know when you're awake,
We know if you've been bad or good,
So be good for goodness' sake!
Oh, you better not surf!
And zip up your fly!
Stop tappin' your toes and trollin' for guys,
Election season's comin' to town!
This may be a naive question, but I've searched the Facebook developer documents and can't get a straight answer: Do the third-party developers of Facebook apps get access to your profile information?
For that matter, where does the code for these third-party apps run? Is it uploaded to the Facebook servers (and run from there), or are these third-party developers running code on their own webserver that uses hooks into the Facebook API?
If I install a Facebook app, does this mean that the developer has access to my profile (even if it is set to "friends only"). Even if the code runs entirely on Facebook's servers, it would seem like it would be easy for a developer to sneak-in code for "phoning home" in some way. Worse, it seems like this proliferation of mini-apps is just begging to create a myriad of security holes that others can exploit to access your restricted profile.
The very fact that Facebook doesn't clearly define what the flow of information is a problem (beyond useless "we value your privacy" rhetoric and "we can do whatever we want with your data" EULA statements). Does anyone have an understanding of the Facebook infrastructure, and can enlighten us all about what the flow-of-information on Facebook is really like?
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."
.. except there is mountains of case law that says otherwise: that EULAs are, in essence, only marginally enforceable.
This being in some hidden Facebook EULA, or on some 'policy page' for Blockbuster does not mean "the user notifies us in writing". That has specific legal meaning: if they don't have a SIGNED PIECE OF PAPER with the words "I allow you do release my video rental records", they don't have notification in writing of permission.
All this is irrelevant, anyway: the worst that's likely to happen here is some states' attorney general will file a lawsuit, get it certified as "class action", and Blockbuster will settle out-of-court and pay some piddly fine + attorney's fees and send everybody who asks a $5 for free rentals. Big deal.
From what I read, maybe we just need to publish the Supreme court credit card #'s and maybe we can get stronger credit protections too. I don't think this law wouldv'e existed if Justice Bork's video rental habbits had not been published in the newspaper.
I don't have a problem with Company X choosing not to produce Movie Y because they don't see commercial potential. Studios have to make those decisions all the time (and bad business decisions are inevitable). After all, they have to put up a lot of resources to get a movie made. But if Movie Y does get made, and Company Z, that is in the mainstream movie rental business, refuses to make that movie available to its customers, only to appease some rabid bunch of loonies, then I have a problem with Company Z. I can also understand it if Movie Y is in some niche market that Company Z doesn't play in. It's the caving in to special interest threats like these that I don't like (this holds, whether or not I had any interest in seeing Movie Y).
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
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