First Facebook Beacon Lawsuit Hits Blockbuster
Erick Schonfeld
27 comments »
As if Blockbuster didn’t have enough problems trying to justify its existence by making an ill-conceived buyout offer for Circuit City. Now, it is being sued for privacy violations related to its Beacon ads on Facebook. And, no, the plaintiff is not Michael, although he did once point out that the way Blockbuster used the names and images of Facebook members without permission to hawk its service could be a violation of their privacy rights. It could also be a violation of the Videotape Privacy Protection Act, which prohibits video stores from sharing customer rental information without written consent. The plaintiff is a woman in Texas, who is suing under that law and seeking class-action status.
It is not clear whether other Beacon partners are at legal risk, since the law in question only applies to video rental businesses. But there are other privacy laws that could be brought into play as well. Regardless, lawsuits like this could revive last year’s Beacon backlash that seems to have died away.
I remember the Beacon backlash very well. What a pain in the neck it was for Facebook users. This lawsuit has revived those sour memories.
Ya, loads of old bad blood boiling back up.
Good to see someone is finally taking FB and BB to task for it though. Sometimes a *VERY* late apology isn’t enough. Average individuals is one thing — people make mistakes sometimes — but corporate entities (FB and BB, etc.) who have lawyers on retainer have no excuse for that sort of thing… They made a business calculation that no one would be smart enough to catch them — or if they did, the ROI would outweigh the risk. They were wrong.
Interesting…. just the other day on our Facebook account we saw one of our friends photos as an ad saying “Ryan thinks you should see Drillbit Tailor!” Not sure who it was for but they were definitely using Facebook user’s names/photos to advertise things without their knowledge. There is definitely some issues that need to be addressed.
Stuff like this makes me think that I should delete all of the “Facebook apps” I have now. I only have about 5, but I think that might be 5 too many. It’s turned into spam and advertisements to no end, and what’s worse is that this spam is personally delivered to you through your friends. As if we weren’t bombarded by enough already.
http://www.miscgarbage.com
When beacon first came out and Blockbuster started adding my movies into my Facebook profile without me knowing, I was pretty peeved. And to top it off, there’s another related issue that makes all this stuff worse; even if you “Hide Story” on your mini-feed, it doesn’t remove it from your friends main Facebook feed. See this thread: http://forum.developers.facebo.....p?id=13434
Shouldn’t they be suing Facebook instead of Blockbuster?
I think she forgot that Facebook was a “social” network, and not a “personal” network.
Ryan & Travis, she’s suing Blockbuster not Facebook because Blockbuster has to have written consent to share that information.
Get we get some background on this woman…kids, married/divorced, welfare, etc?
i’m sick of these retarded lawsuits. Ok, you don’t want your friends to see what you rented at blockbuster, delete the APP. You don’t want your friends knowing anything, DELETE YOUR FB ACCOUNT!
i’m gonna go fall down the stairs now and blame the building.
I can imagine this happened.
@billy — That’s all old news. People tried to argue that last year when Bacn first came out. It doesn’t hold water, legally. FB and BB is still liable for whatever is done with your information. The problem was that this was never consented to. On a SocNet you should be able to manage and *control* your personal data. That’s the ethical route — and also the legal one.
Be careful when posting personal information on social network. But lawsuits are non-sense.
The VPPA violation is pretty clear. BTW, each violation is worth something like $2500 per incident. I wish I was a BB sub that could join this class.
Where do I sign up?
@billy, the issue was that you didn’t need to have an app installed to do it. being logged into facebook, while renting a movie at blockbuster.com caused information to be pushed to my public news feed. let me say it again: FB + BB DID THIS W/O ME OPTING-IN IN ANY FORM OR WAY. i didn’t think that signing up for a FB account was enough to push my private rentals to a public site.
this was until the backlash was so severe they changed the model to force people to add applications to accomplish the same functionality.
As if there were any privacy on a social network. It’s not called a privacy network. However, the point of FB was supposed to be that it was “closedprivate” as opposed to “open social” — hence the raised eyebrows and dismay, if not the lawsuits.
Anyone claiming it is a “social network” and not a “private” or “privacy network” need to stop and think.
I signed up to connect with friends that I lost touch with and maybe meet a few new ones. NOT to publicize my commercial activity.
Maybe she was embarrassed because she was renting skinemax movies and didn’t want anyone to know. Its a good thing that netflix doesn’t have this app, cuz i could recommend a few dvds , not that anyone would be interested.
@8
not using a new, innovative service will not prevent it from being there for all the unsuspecting, ‘nimwitted’ general public.
threatening careless companies behind these innovative and useful services with lawsuits when they overstep sensible lines, is what keeps the innovation going, while checked with the common rights we’ve grown to expect.
by ‘not using’ the service, instead of pushing to improve it, you improve nothing, and deprive yourself of innovations.
enjoy the falling down the stairs part..
I hope there is something inside BB’s and/or FB’s tos, privacy policy, etc, that says they can do this sort of thing with people’s account.
I’m sick of everyone blaming someone else. She should’ve got her fat ass off the couch and went to blockbuster (or local video store), instead of using the internet.
Maybe she did rent some movie that she was ashamed of, but how does getting a quick buck solve the problem..it doesn’t. she should get a job instead of trying to figure out who she can sue with some frivolous lawsuit.
yeah bb totally sucks!
Two choices here: Delete your FB account altogether like I did and join Flugpo (who speaks out against abuse of privacy rights)
or
go to mydataismydata.org and get the free plug-in that will block FB cookies
Nice to have choices, huh?
I use Blockbuster’s service, it is a far superior product to Netflix (ability to exchange in store very convenient), and they did ask me if they could display information on Facebook. However, I NOW CANNOT OPT OUT!! Oh well, no biggy.
Good, BB should be taking for this and Facebooks crap service too.