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Facebook Must Face Class-Action Lawsuit Over Facial Recognition, Says Judge (kfgo.com)
U.S. District Judge James Donato ruled on Monday that Facebook must face a class-action lawsuit alleging that the social network unlawfully used a facial recognition process on photos without user permission. Donato ruled that a class-action was the most efficient way to resolve the dispute over facial templates. KFGO reports: Facebook said it was reviewing the ruling. "We continue to believe the case has no merit and will defend ourselves vigorously," the company said in a statement. Lawyers for the plaintiffs could not immediately be reached for comment. Facebook users sued in 2015, alleging violations of an Illinois state law about the privacy of biometric information. The class will consist of Facebook users in Illinois for whom Facebook created and stored facial recognition algorithms after June 7, 2011, Donato ruled. That is the date when Facebook launched "Tag Suggestions," a feature that suggests people to tag after a Facebook user uploads a photo. In the U.S. court system, certification of a class is typically a major hurdle that plaintiffs in proposed class actions need to overcome before reaching a possible settlement or trial.
I look forward to my free years' worth of Facebook Premium (tm) as compensation. (/s)
Anything to slow down or hinder the evil that is Facebook is great.
Maybe it was just a bug on my smartphone, but when I was given the screen about they are gonna use facial recognition and I could opt out, the opt-out link didn't work. When I went into the options myself I found it enabled and greyed out. A couple weeks later it was enabled and not greyed out, then I was able to disable it.
Let's do it! Can't wait for my $0.16 settlement check!
If this is the kind of shoddy treatment companies can now expect in this country then they should move overseas to where they, their jobs and their money are welcome.
Am I alone? Facebook is starting to get attributes of a product, once desirable, that is now really beginning to go bad.
Some would read this as "getting rotten."
I'm certainly willing to stipulate that Facebook has many gigantic problems. I would even say that my images, including my face, are part of my personal information that is being horrendously abused by Facebook. However, it is obvious to me that the lawyers are more concerned with creating new problems than solving anything.
My suggestion for a solution approach would be a rather different: A non-adversarial business model for Facebook. Rather than pitting us against the advertisers, which guarantees the advertisers are going to win because it's their money, a better system (which Facebook has no potential of becoming, if you ask me) would focus on cost recovery for actual services rendered. Yeah, I'm calling TANSTAAFL on Facebook and saying we should be paying for the real costs of the services we actually want to use. Of course we want to pay as little as possible, but we're paying anyway, even though Facebook doesn't show us any of the real bills and invoices. ADSAuPR, atAJG.
By the way, I think this approach could in theory be added as an extension to an advertiser-funded model. The reason Facebook can never do it is because they have become a corporate cancer, and cost-recovery is fundamentally opposed to profit maximization. Not acceptable to the cancer to leave those chips on the table because profit is NEVER sufficiently maximized. Or to put it in religious terms:
There is no gawd but profit, and Facebook wants to be the #1 prophet!
Oh yeah. About the face problem. It's okay if people want to annotate pictures with PRIVATE notes such as thinking an image is me, but it is NOT okay to share those notes with the world unless I quite explicitly agree to the sharing. In the wrinkled middle ground, I might (or might not) even be willing to confirm that a face annotated in private notes is mine, but that is NOT to say I would agree to making those notes PUBLIC without telling me. That's just the tip of the solution approach, but ADSAuPR, atAJG. (Twice in one post? Looks bad, folks.)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Welcome to the Beginning of the END..... hopefully...
in a perfect world :)
[($)]
As long as there's been cameras, there's been the thorny issue of owning the brand/copyright versus owning the image. This is why all social networks don't touch copyright and their ownership of the upload is non-exclusive.
Facebook is a publicity service, helping people find you. It's why Facebook hides and repeatedly resets/deletes privacy settings; it is contrary to the point of the service; and thus their profits. This is a problem when users think they can have privacy: In fact, any claim by Facebook offering privacy is a blatant act of fraud. This is a problem when users load images of other people onto Facebook; those people have been robbed of privacy and anonymity. The best example is the wall of (mostly female) nudie photos on Facebook and Tumblr. I like viewing them but I wonder how many women asked, agreed or knew their bodies would be shown to the world? For most women, they're another pair of tits in crowd, so it doesn't matter. For some women, such as Pamela Anderson, Paris Hilton and Jennifer Lawrence, it's a huge invasion of privacy. If we want privacy for all, we need to protect the privacy of celebrities first.
Atleast facebook recognized my face. In bad times, even friends and relatives don't.
(sloppy pun intended)
Unwilling there to
Is this the difference between doing it on the server: facebook, google, and on your own computer iTunes?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If you are allowed to recognize people on a photo someone shows you — without the pictured people's permission — how can it possibly be illegal for Facebook or anyone else to do that?
That said, a class-action lawsuit may, indeed, be the best way to solve this question...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Google is also being sued under the same illinois law. Apple is not. Presumably this is because with apple it's you that is doing it to your own photos So it's you that would be culpable for gathering biometrics without consent
I wonder if this means you cant do any facial recognition research in Illinois? Sure there are face data banks but how do you know they are legal in Illinois.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.