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Uber Bans Driver Who Secretly Livestreamed Hundreds of Passengers (mashable.com)
Lauren Weinstein tipped us off to this story from Mashable:
Hundreds of Uber and Lyft rides have been broadcast live on Twitch by driver Jason Gargac this year, St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Saturday, all of them without the passengers' permission. Gargac, who goes by the name JustSmurf on Twitch, regularly records the interior of his car while working for Uber and Lyft with a camera in the front of the car, allowing viewers to see the faces of his passengers, illuminated by his (usually) purple lights, and hear everything they say. At no point does Gargac make passengers aware that they are being filmed or livestreamed.
Due to Missouri's "one-party consent" law, in which only one party needs to agree to be recorded for it to be legal (in this case, Gargac is the consenting one), what Gargac is doing is perfectly legal. That doesn't mean it's not 100 percent creepy. Sometimes, to confirm who they are for their driver, the passengers say their full names. Not only that, Gargac has another video that shows the view out the front of his car so that people can see where he's driving, giving away the locations of some passengers' homes.
All the while, viewers on Twitch are commenting about things like the quality of neighborhoods, what the passengers are talking about, and of course, women's looks. Gargac himself is openly judgmental about the women he picks up, commenting to his viewers about their appearances before they get in his car and making remarks after he drops them off. He also regularly talks about wanting to get more "content," meaning interesting people, and is open about the fact that he doesn't want passengers to know they are on camera.
"I feel violated. I'm embarrassed," one passenger told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "We got in an Uber at 2 a.m. to be safe, and then I find out that because of that, everything I said in that car is online and people are watching me. It makes me sick."
The offending driver announced today on Twitter that he's at least "getting rid of the stored vids." He calls this move "step #1 of trying to calm everyone down." Hours ago his Twitch feed was made inaccessible.
Lyft and Twitch have not yet responded to Mashable's request for a comment. But Uber said they've (temporarily?) banned Gargac from accessing their app "while we evaluate his partnership with Uber."
Due to Missouri's "one-party consent" law, in which only one party needs to agree to be recorded for it to be legal (in this case, Gargac is the consenting one), what Gargac is doing is perfectly legal. That doesn't mean it's not 100 percent creepy. Sometimes, to confirm who they are for their driver, the passengers say their full names. Not only that, Gargac has another video that shows the view out the front of his car so that people can see where he's driving, giving away the locations of some passengers' homes.
All the while, viewers on Twitch are commenting about things like the quality of neighborhoods, what the passengers are talking about, and of course, women's looks. Gargac himself is openly judgmental about the women he picks up, commenting to his viewers about their appearances before they get in his car and making remarks after he drops them off. He also regularly talks about wanting to get more "content," meaning interesting people, and is open about the fact that he doesn't want passengers to know they are on camera.
"I feel violated. I'm embarrassed," one passenger told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "We got in an Uber at 2 a.m. to be safe, and then I find out that because of that, everything I said in that car is online and people are watching me. It makes me sick."
The offending driver announced today on Twitter that he's at least "getting rid of the stored vids." He calls this move "step #1 of trying to calm everyone down." Hours ago his Twitch feed was made inaccessible.
Lyft and Twitch have not yet responded to Mashable's request for a comment. But Uber said they've (temporarily?) banned Gargac from accessing their app "while we evaluate his partnership with Uber."
The broadcasting should have an effect and is the make factor vs. being simply recorded. They would have to get a model release form or similar. In Missouri, you do have a right of publicity, meaning that using your likeness for commercial purposes or for ad revenue requires consent. In addition, you have the legal right to protect you against publishing of private facts (eg personal conversations in a car).
http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guid...
If he was monetizing his streams, then he needs to get model releases signed by everyone appearing in his streams. Otherwise he's violating the personality rights (right to control how one's image is used) of the passengers. Even if he didn't make money, publishing and distributing video with the intent to spread it far and wide (i.e. not just for your cousin Billy to view) typically requires model releases. If he doesn't have signed releases, these people can sue him for a piece of anything he gained, which arguably could be extended to income he made from Uber/Lyft.
It's the same reason why reality TV shows blur out the faces of people in the background (they couldn't chase them down to get model releases signed). News reporting usually gets a waiver because freedom of the press supersedes personality rights if broadcasting the image is necessary or incidental to coverage of a newsworthy event.
In other words, he's deeply and truly screwed. Doubly so since that he's admitted he's deleting the videos - that now constitutes destruction of evidence. (Evidence victims could use to validate that their rights were violated, and that he owes them damages.)