FTC Warns Site Not To Sell Personal Data

itwbennett writes "The US Federal Trade Commission has warned two people associated with a now-defunct magazine and Web site for gay teens and young men that they would violate the privacy promises the publication made to subscribers by selling their personal information during a bankruptcy proceeding. The FTC, in a letter sent earlier this month, also suggested that the owners of XY Magazine and XY.com would be violating the privacy standards the company had in place before shutting down if they used the subscribers' personal information in a relaunch of the magazine or website. The personal information is listed as part of the debtor's estate in a New Jersey bankruptcy proceeding for Peter Ian Cummings, editor and founder of the magazine. Before the magazine's demise, many of the subscribers lived at home with parents."

Comments

Yet the US gov got Birthday Club data

[AHuxley]

Funny how they cannot sell data, but the US Selective Service "ie draft" seemed to like buying and using data when they wanted it :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farrell's_Ice_Cream_Parlour
The data an American ice cream parlor chain was used to warn young men to register for the draft before their 18th birthday in the early 1980's.
It was all a big Google (mistake) when exposed.

Re:Yet the US gov got Birthday Club data

[Anonymous Coward]

During the early to mid 1980s the Selective Service grabbed data from all over the place. In particular, for me, they grabbed information from the high school honor roll that was published. Unfortunately, the school made a typo on my information and had mine entered as middle name, last name, first name (my real names, but in that order). "I" got several notes from Selective Service indicating that "I" (by the incorrect name) was a draft dodger. It took awhile to get that sorted out and make them understand that there was no such person. By then, that name was getting military recruiter calls and even began getting jury duty notices. I actually attended jury duty by that name once. Finally got it all cleared up.

Bad Comparison

[dreamchaser]

Even the submission says it's because the company in question had privacy policies in place prior to going bankrupt. They would be violatinig said policies if they give away or sell the data. Listing it as 'assets' in bankrupcy court when they weren't supposed to sell it in the first place was a mistake by them.

The Selective Service has no such polcies.

Re:Bad Comparison

[wowbagger]

"In a sense, the personal information was leased to company...."

In a sense, I am levitating on a force-field right now - of course, that "force field" is created by the atoms of the chair.

In a sense the data was leased; unfortunately that "sense" is not in the sense of the law, or the sense of GAAP, or any "sense" that is legally binding on the company or the bankruptcy court.

What is needed is for companies that collect your data to EXPLICITLY state, as a part of the contract you enter into prior to them collecting the data, "We don't own this data, you do - we are just holding it for you. We have a specific license to use that data in this specific ways, and we cannot change that license without your explicit consent - we must destroy the data if we cannot continue to abide by this contract." (and IANAL so I don't know if that wording would stand up in court).

Only something of that strength would prevent companies from "monetizing your data".

Re:Bad Comparison

[Artifakt]

One of the things I noticed re. Copyright law (a favorite subject for Slashdot, of course): I ran across the copyright indexes of several authors, such as H. P. Lovecraft, who were big on only giving magazines first publication rights, not the standard 'all rights' clause in contracts. Lovecraft was part of the amateur press scene of his time and actually wrote articles about it, aimed at new authors, plus he metioned it in several letters to fellow authors. HPL also died during the depression, and if you look at the copyright history of his work, a lot of stories pass from a single magazine such as Weird Tales, through many different small companies' hands, before the rights ended up being purchased by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei after the depression ended.
      It looks like a bunch of small presses bought republication rights from magazines such as Weird Tales that the magazine may not have actually owned to sell, and passed these around in one standard contract after another. It looks very strange to see four stories published in the same magazine the same year, all passing through different small press owners hands, with a bunch of corporate names that are all swiftly out of existence, have little or no actual publication history, or seem to maybe be nothing but shell corporations. You have to wonder, if Lovecraft is any indicator, if Weird Tales actually took the time to sell off rights to thousands of old stories one at a time, to literally hundreds of separate companies, instead of bundling them somehow. The explanation seems to be that at least some of these contracts came out of bankruptcy courts, which were working overtime in that era. Unfortunately, only a few of these documents have good paper trails, and it's hard to really prove one way or another.
        Given the middle of the Great Depression connection, I've wondered if this was because bankruptcy courts were distributing these assets as part of big pools of similar fluff, without taking the time to check all the details on items they doubtless felt were of little real worth. Probably they were focusing on the physical assets of the companies, where those existed, and didn't expect these 'IP' assets to ever come back into print.
        This may bear out what the OP wrote. In practice, the bankruptcy courts seem to sometimes ignore restrictions in contract whether that's really what the law says to do or not, particularly if the asset is perceived as having little value compared to the rest of what the court has to deal with.

Re:Bad Comparison

[Fractal Dice]

Should datamining be a criminal offense?

I mean, there is this big effort building laws and international standards surrounding and protecting the copyright on databases - perhaps the act of accumulating and correlating personal information in the first place needs to be examined and attached to the same infrastructure?

If you value privacy, then it seems to me that legal restrictions are the logical endgame - as more and more databases of aliases are interconnected and more of our lives moves to online services, living off the grid will be a full time career of paranoia.

Just food for thought.

Re:Mr Cummings

[Hognoxious]

Oh btw, armed and aware gay people tend not to be bashed.

http://pinkpistols.org/

Does their logo look like a vulva, or is it just me?

Re:Promises

[Skapare]

The data is still in the hands of the original owners. By filing this with the BK court, the FTC has established that it is illegal (unless another party's argument can prevail, and this would most likely have to be litigated in a separate venue, not in BK) for the sale to be made. Effectively, the subscribers have a lien on the data, which amounts to an ownership of the right sale, held by the subscribers themselves, in absence. Selling it might then be considered no different than the sale of stolen goods (which even a BK court cannot do).