A new lawsuit filed against Facebook in the Superior Court of California in Orange County is one of the more entertaining documents we’ve had the pleasure of reading recently. A lot of lawsuits against Facebook are fairly serious, but this one certainly isn’t — we haven’t seen litigation this amusing since the Attorney General of South Carolina set his sights on Craigslist to kick-start his campaign for governor.
Plaintiffs in the case appear to have engaged in run of the mill socializing on Facebook: sharing photos, writing status updates and similar things. They’re then complaining that privacy, copyright and other rights are violated as people look at the photos, read the updates, etc. It’s sort of like jumping into a pool and then complaining that you’re wet.
The lawsuit complains about or at least insidiously describes pretty much every single part of Facebook, from the nefarious “wall” to a potentially incriminating “Data Analyst” job listing the company posted in 2007. Oh, and the best part? The AP and WSJ just reported the case straight, without the slightest suggestion that the Plaintiffs might be a little off. We’ve embedded the full, 40 page suit below.
So what are the Plantiffs accusing Facebook of? The suit alleges that that Facebook is at its core a “data mining company.. [that] seeks to open and/or disseminate private information to third parties for commercial purposes and economic benefit” and that “Facebook has created a business model and apparatus designed to harvest as much personal and private information as possible in easiest, quickest, and most innocuous-looking manner possible.” Cue the ominous music. It gets better.
The complaints from the individual Plaintiffs involve everything from swine flu to “accomplished actresses”. We’ve excerpted a couple of them below.
“Plaintiff Xavier O. is an 11-year-old minor residing with his parents in Orange County, California. Plaintiff Xavier O. has a Facebook account that was opened without the knowledge or consent of his parent or guardian. Plaintiff Xavier O. has uploaded personal information, videos and photographs, including swimming and/or partially clothed photographs of children ages 5 to 11. On or about August 8, 2009, Plaintiff Xavier O. posted “Xavier O. has swine flu… Please pray for me… God Bless.” Upon learning of the Facebook account and the posting of an uncertain medical condition, Plaintiff Xavier O’s parents removed the medical condition posting from Facebook. Xavier O. and his parents have been unable to learn where the minor’s medical information may have been stored, disseminated or sold by Facebook.”
Plaintiff Elvina Beck is an accomplished actress and model residing in Los Angeles, California. Plaintiff Beck has multiple commercial representatives/agents for print, commercial and theatrical work. Plaintiff Beck’s name, likeness and photos are highly valuable commercial assets. Plaintiff Beck appears in national print advertisements, commercials and films, and she is compensated for such work. Beck’s filmography includes Love Hurts, Privileged, CSI: New York, and ESPN 25. Plaintiff Beck’s digital images have been disseminated by Facebook without her consent, knowledge, or compensation.
Another Plantiff is apparently objecting to the fact that Facebook has changed over the years from a college-only social network to a much broader one, and is unhappy with the way the site’s Terms of Service were modified over the years. Except it’s quite common for sites to change their ToS without giving notice. There goes that idea.
In short, the Plantiffs are complaining about many of the very mechanisms that make Facebook a social network. They’re also complaining about issues that have been addressed before — some of the concerns over content ownership issues are pretty explicitly spelled out in the site’s Terms, which state “You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how we share your content through your privacy and application settings.” There may be some nuggets of validity hidden in here, but you’re going to have to look hard to find them.
Facebook has given us the following brief response regarding the suit:
We see no merit to this suit and we plan to fight it.
Image by Goleta on Flickr.
first on the deck
1st to the deck
No one forced these people to join the site and participate. When you sign up for Facebook or any social network, you agree to the terms and conditions of that network. If you don’t like the terms, don’t participate. Otherwise, trying to sue the company for those very rules is just ridiculous.
It’s just like obese people eating fast food suing back the companies selling fast food to them
Haven’t you heard? Personal responsibly was just a fad… made up big, oppressive companies.
I can’t wait until our omniscient politicians and divine lawyers stick it to those that deserve it – someone ELSE!
That’s not necessarily true. Many FB accounts are made on behalf of someone else, maybe to persuade them to join, because they don’t have Internet access, etc. In the case of the actress/model, same problem, she didn’t necessarily sign up herself – “disseminated by Facebook without her consent, knowledge, or compensation.”
Next time try reading.
I think the issue (the reason the actress is involved in the suit) is that Facebook has your profile page in its system, searchable and viewable by anybody (even if its on friends-only, your primary photo shows up). Basically, this is a crock of steamy shite…They are suing the company for adhering to its own terms, which they already agreed to, and for acting in precisely the way it always has. Namely, she thinks that by making a profile and putting a picture up, somebody somewhere is counting her pageviews and adding up royalties-style payments to send to her. Now that she realizes that isn’t how it actually works, she wants to sue for the money that never existed and was never hers, OR Facebooks, in the first place.
And thank you SO MUCH for that last little snippet – you were totally right about the AP release, I read it earlier and didn’t even connect that article to this one. My first time reading it, I assumed Facebook was doing its thing from before, when the terms read ‘uploaded information, pictures, and video may be used for advertising purposes’ and they got sued for it (IIRC, or something to that effect) and that the lawsuit was serious. I suppose its serious enough to the jackasses filing it, but still – you really cannot complain about a website showing your profile to people when it is a website that shows people’s profiles to other people, and you have to sign up for that to happen.
DITTO!!!!
You can’t make this shit up. Oh wait…
Elvina Beck is a national treasure, and her lawsuit will shutdown Facebook. Or not.
So funny. She’s searchable on Google, too. Wonder if that lawsuit is next?
I love how the parents didn’t take responsibility for X’s actions. Instead, “let’s blame a social network, that’ll work better.”
@alex: You’re a tool.
@the_article: I hope they win.
PS. Here’s a picture of Elvina Beck. Rawr!
http://www.imdb...77728/nm1728187
+1
She should probably sue IMDB, too then. They’re not paying her to use her picture.
I’m going to set up a site filled with her pictures in hope she might sue me so I get to meet her in court…
…Did I just sound like a psycho?
Plaintiff Elvina Beck is an accomplished actress and model residing in Los Angeles, California. Plaintiff alleges that defendant viewed and masturbated to her likeness without permission.
“Except it’s quite common for sites to change their ToS without giving notice. There goes that idea.”
It certainly sounds like a poorly executed shot in the dark of a lawsuit, but why make a statement like this? The implication is that because web apps commonly change their ToS without notice, this practice is not only acceptable, but should not be questioned.
I think there are several very important points to be made about the likely majority of facebook users that have no idea how their personal data is being used. That’s not to mention how that data’s use may have changed since they originally read and accepted the ToS.
Agree with that… I’d like to be informed thanks and Facebook’s done that pretty well (firestorm a few months ago). But the sites that don’t inform me IMO suck. i.e. Yahoo who changed the ToS of their domain hosting a few years ago jacking the price while they were at it and failing to let me know until I was billed. Their claim: we posted it on our domain management site. How often do you as admin look at the domain management site once you’ve set everything up?
Sites that do that lose my business. Goodbye Yahoo, hello godaddy + google.
I believe Arrington can also attest to some of the wierdos living in Orange County. It’s like a sadder version of LA really.
you guys laugh, but honestly all it takes is for one of these dumb ass lawyers to convince some old, out of touch judge that his case is valid and BOOM social networking as we know it is inadvertently changed.
I can’t stand the people that sue every chance they get. For some reason they equate it to hitting the lottery and that that is how people get rich in this country.
I agree 100% with what you are saying. Idiots win these absurd lawsuits all the time. Reference http://stellaawards.com/ (named after the moron who spilled coffee on herself and was amazed that it was hot). They should all be taken behind the wood shed in old world Russia and properly dealt with.
First of all, doesn’t it state in the ToS of these social networking sites that they reserve the right to change the Terms of Service at any time for any reason without prior consent or notification? They also agreed to that. As for the 11 yr old, am I mistaken that facebook states that you legally consent to be 13 years of age or older? Registration and Account Security:
“2. You will not use Facebook if you are under 13.”
“3. We will provide you with tools to help you protect your intellectual property rights. To learn more, visit our How to Report Claims of Intellectual Property Infringement page.”
As for The use of Elvina Beck’s property, I’m sure when she registered, she agreed to section 2, Sharing Content and Information. Hmm… I bet that gives facebook permission to display the photos that SHE uploaded on THEIR website.
Case closed!
I doubt this will be as fun for them when the court makes them pay Facebook’s legal fees.
I like the one where a 12 year old registered on facebook without the parents consent. Reminds me of when i worked at mobile subscription company and parents would call saying that it was illegal for their minor to have a contract with my company.
These people are all idiots. Hopefully some natural selection takes care of all of them.
Jason, thanks for being the only reporter I’ve seen who bothered to consider the implications and validity of the allegations in the complaint. The fact of the matter is that once a company becomes high profile enough, it becomes a target for litigation. Some of those cases will have merit, while others will simply be opportunistic attempts to share in the success of others. Reporting the facts of these cases is, of course, important but I think the real value media following a company adds for its readers is to help them separate the important issues from the frivolous ones. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees.
Attention Hollywood Producers: Elvina Beck may be difficult to work with.
yes, elvina beck. quite the dish. not that you’d know by looking at her facebook page — that’s locked out to nonfriends.
but did you know she also has her own website and myspace pages that aren’t locked? kinda makes the whole lawsuit idea even sillier.
for more hot pix of elvina and details on that (and other silly lawsuits) see http://www.esar...ok-win-a-prize/
cheers,
dt
“It’s sort of like jumping into a pool and then complaining that you’re wet.”
Except this pool makes billions of dollars from getting you wet and the pool is full of millions of people. After all the hoopla about the TOS and privacy changes to Facebook I would at least give this a little merit. You will see more of the suits not just because Facebook has a lot of money, but because Facebook is becoming(already is?) the default social network. As Facebook pursues its dominance of all social data and social networking as a service, privacy issues will become even more of a concern and at a minimum this suit at least acknowledges those concerns.
Yea, has anyone actually read the legal document, posted above?
As the article mentions, one of the main beefs of the filing seems to be that Facebook is allowing third party data mining of personal information beyond the “friends” that people have authorized to view their profiles (such as a professional photographer’s photograph collection).
I’d hardly call that “jumping into a pool and then complaining that you’re wet.” That sounds like a pretty unfair characterization to me.
I’m not saying that the allegations are true, but let’s at least not mischaracterize them.
Ok, so I’m assuming you have proof, other than the plaintiff’s complaint in the legal document that Facebook is selling private information to 3rd party data miners. If they were doing that, they’d be shut down in a week.
The fact of the matter is, Facebook users submit private information freely. If they don’t want the information out there vulnerable to hacking more so than Facebook’s unproven act of selling the information to data miners, they shouldn’t put the information out there to begin with. And if one does choose to join Facebook, they should do so with reluctance and be careful of the information they do post on Facebook. Don’t put it out there if you don’t want it to be seen (i.e. hacked, etc.)
One of the plaintiffs is also suing Facebook on AllRise court – http://bit.ly/OXVQV
So here’s a thought. Worried about privacy? Worried about personal things about you getting out on the old interwebz? Then DON’T put them out there. Don’t sign up for sites like this.
Pretty simple to me really.
Next lawsuit I see…. Somebody suing Al Gore for creating the interwebz.
OMgosh dont you just love politics! LOL
RT
http://www.web-tools.us.tc
TechCrunch is irresponsible in its attacks against the AG of SC. If you pull your head out of Arrington, and look into the issue, you would find that craigslist is the primary tool used by pimps to whore out underage sex slaves in America. Dont believe? Even msnbc has done work exposing these facts. Think about it, underage girls, forced through violence, to prostitute themselves to clients, all coordinated through craigslist, right in your backyard. I applaud the AG for standing up against this type of immoral company.
don’t go to the club if you don’t like the music.
spacebook haha
Ok why don’t they take it a step further? Sue microsoft or the makers of redhat software for enabeling the makers of facebook to create such a beastly application.
Make those companies responsible for how others use their product.
Or maybe the hosting company that runs facebooks servers.. Are they responsible for putting this loaded gun into the hands of mad men ?
I’m sure when they started facebook their whole idea was to amass all the information in the world and then use it against us.. Oh wait that’s google