Archive for the ‘Social Network Websites’ Category
Tweeting for the Party
posted by Danielle Citron
During the 2008 election, Democrats effectively used Web 2.0 platforms to garner interest in the campaign and win supporters. President Obama has been widely hailed as the first “Tech President,” and he seems to have trounced the Facebook landscape. To date, President Barack Obama has over 6.6 million Facebook friends, while Sarah Palin only has 848, 614 Facebook pals and Mitt Romney has 70, 130.
Although the President has proven his mettle on Facebook and MySpace (where he has over 1.8 million friends), Republicans rule the day on the micro-blogging front. The Congressional Research Service reports that congressional Republicans out-tweeted their Democratic counterparts during two one-week periods this summer. Nancy Scola attributes Congressional Republicans’ Twitter dominance to their desire to regain the public’s attention and favor now that they are in the minority. AMERICAblogs’ John Aravosis worries that Democrats have ceded their online advantage.
No matter the current political victor in this social media landscape, Government 2.0 is here to stay. It surely has great potential to shine light on government policymaking and to marshal public participation, especially from people who otherwise wouldn’t bother getting involved with government policymaking. Adding the President as a friend on MySpace and joining live chats may seem to be a relatively costless endeavor as compared to writing letters or commenting on agency rulemakings. But Government 2.0 also poses privacy risks: social media sites not only give government access to people’s policy insights but also access to all of individuals’ social media data, such as their videos, photos, walls musings, “Top 25 things you don’t know about me” lists, and the like. Soon, I will be posting on SSRN a draft of my essay “The One-Way Mirror: Enhancing Participation and Securing Privacy for Government 2.0″ (forthcoming George Washington Law Review) and hope to get your feedback.
September 28, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Posted in: Cyberlaw, Google & Search Engines, Privacy, Privacy (Consumer Privacy), Privacy (Electronic Surveillance), Privacy (Law Enforcement), Privacy (National Security), Social Network Websites, Technology, Uncategorized
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Growth and Entrepenuership
posted by Dave Hoffman
Quick: what percent of the U.S. manufacturing workforce labors in workplaces of twenty employees or less. What percent of all workers are self-employed?
No idea? Here’s some help.
- 18 percent of the British manufacturing workforce labors in small firms, and 15 percent of all workers are self-employed.
- 13 percent of the German manufacturing workforce labors in small firms, and 12 percent of all workers are self-employed.
- 31 percent of the Italian manufacturing workforce labors in small firms, and 26 percent of all workers are self-employed.
- 18 percent of the French manufacturing workforce labors in small firms, and 9 percent of all workers are self-employed.
Answers follow the jump.
September 23, 2009 at 10:50 am
Posted in: Economic Analysis of Law, Social Network Websites
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Facebook Settles Beacon Lawsuit
posted by Daniel Solove
A while ago, I wrote a lot about Facebook’s Beacon on this blog:
* The Facebook-Fandango Connection: Invasion of Privacy?
* Facebook’s Beacon: News Feeds All Over Again?
* Facebook and the Appropriation of Name or Likeness Tort
* The New Facebook Ads — Starring You: Another Privacy Debacle?
* Facebook — the New DoubleClick?
* Facebook Listens and Responds
* Facebook’s Beacon, Blockbuster, and the Video Privacy Protection Act
A class action suit was initiated against Facebook, and recently, a settlement agreement has been reached. According to the WSJ:
Facebook Inc. said Friday it settled a class-action lawsuit related to its Beacon Web product, a controversial service that displayed actions that users took on other Web sites back on Facebook.
As part of the settlement, which is pending approval in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California, the social-network concern will shut down the Beacon service, which it has been phasing out but which is still being used by a small number of Web sites, according to a Facebook spokesman.
The company will also pay $9.5 million to create a foundation to fund products that promote online privacy, safety and security, the spokesman said. The settlement was submitted to the court late Friday evening.
September 21, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Posted in: Privacy, Privacy (Consumer Privacy), Social Network Websites, Web 2.0
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Twits, As In The NFL Management Folks and Twitter
posted by Deven Desai
Although I despise those who twitter as a general matter (and will thus likely embrace the odd medium any day now), it has moments where it is useful. Short bursts of information updates for natural disasters, airport shut downs, and possible revolutionary mayhem come to mind. Today a less major (depending on how you look at it) issue, gmail going down, has shown that Twitter is again useful but barely. As TechCrunch notes, Twitter may have come close to crashing but held up well as thousands upon thousands of folks expressed frustration and ore about the great Google in the sky going down. And yes some Google folks used the medium to communicate bland statements about how Google was addressing the problem (probably asking some extraordinarily smart people about some obscure math issue and then finding that such knowledge may not help them figure out email service).
Now the NFL has come along and has regulated the use of Twitter as CNET describes:
[The NFL has] modified its social-media policy to limit Twitter and social-networking use by players, coaches, league officials, and even the media. The NFL said that it will let players, coaches, and other team personnel engage in social networking during the season. However, they will be prohibited from using Twitter and from updating profiles on Facebook and other social-networking sites during games. In addition, they will not be allowed to tweet or update social-networking profiles 90 minutes before a game and until post-game interviews are completed. The rules even extend to people “representing” a player or coach on their personal accounts. The NFL didn’t just stop with the league itself, though. The organization also said that media attending games will be prohibited from providing game updates through social networks.
I love the NFL’s reason and think that it is trying to assert that even fans ought not be able to share play-by-play:
“Longstanding policies prohibiting play-by-play descriptions of NFL games in progress apply fully to Twitter and other social media platforms,” the National Football League said in its statement. “Internet sites may not post detailed information that approximates play-by-play during a game. “While a game is in progress, any forms of accounts of the game must be sufficiently time-delayed and limited in amount (e.g., score updates with detail given only in quarterly game updates) so that the accredited organization’s game coverage cannot be used as a substitute for, or otherwise approximate, authorized play-by-play accounts.”
This position seems to suggest that one, players, etc. twittering has something to do with approximating play-by-play when most likely the NFL wants to regulate the way in which all those connected with a team communicate and represent themselves around a game. One might agree that being in the NFL requires following its odd ethics. How those goals havve anything to do with play-by-play recounting is beyond me. If fans start to share exuberant moments in almost real time, as I did via text in the glorious game to of the NBA finals this past season, but instead of using text, fans used Twitter, the NFL might assert that such sharing is not allowed. At least the quoted logic above seems to point to such nonsense. As CNET notes enforcement even at the team level will be quite difficult as the nFL won’t know who posted what. Of course the NFL could require some sort of disclosure of Twitter and other social networking aliases which raises a host of standard objections that readers here can easily figure out while the NFL may not. All of which makes me wonder, should the twits who came up with these positions love Twitter?
September 1, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Tags: gmail, NFL, Twitter
Posted in: Cyberlaw, First Amendment, Social Network Websites
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The Revenge of College Gossip Websites
posted by Daniel Solove
A while ago, the notorious college gossip website, Juicy Campus, bit the dust. But according to an article by Jeffrey Young in the Chronicle of Higher Education:
“This is the new JuicyCampus,” says a note at Campus Gossip, which boasts campus-specific message boards for hundreds of colleges and encourages anonymous and racy barbs such as “These Fellas got herpes,” with a list of names attached. Going even further than its predecessor, there’s also a photo section where students can post embarrassing pictures and videos of others.
The site is planning a back-to-school marketing push, including a happy hour near Arizona State University where a rap artist named Sabotage will perform a song about the pleasures of campus gossip.
Another site, CollegeACB (the letters stand for Anonymous Confession Board), paid the defunct JuicyCampus $10,000 to redirect visitors from its Web address to CollegeACB.
For those who want a first-hand look at these sites, the Campus Gossip site is here and the CollegeACB site is here. I’m quoted in the article, as is co-blogger Danielle Citron:
Internet shaming creates an indelible blemish on a person’s identity,” wrote Daniel J. Solove, a professor of law at George Washington University, in his 2007 book, The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet (Yale University Press). “It’s similar to being forced to wear a digital scarlet letter or being branded or tattooed. People acquire permanent digital baggage. They are unable to escape their past, which is forever etched into Google’s memory.” . . . .
“I don’t see why it has to be that way,” the law professor told me in a recent interview. “Just like when you drive, it’s not a free-for-all,” he added, equating the current laws governing online forums to a road without traffic lights or stop signs. “It’s like if we looked at the roads and said, There’s just nothing to be done—let’s just abolish all rules of the road.” . . . .
Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Maryland at Baltimore, said she hoped that stamping out harassment on campus-gossip Web sites would be considered a matter of civil rights.
She makes the case in an article published in the Michigan Law Review this year called “Law’s Expressive Value in Combating Cyber Gender Harassment.” In it, she argues that law-enforcement officials fail to take seriously complaints about online anonymous comments, and that using “civil-rights remedies” may be the most effective way to pursue such acts.
“Women should not have to wait until cyberharassment fulminates into physical violence for law enforcement to address it,” she wrote. “A civil-rights agenda … would demonstrate that the Internet is not the lawless Wild West, just as court settlements and state legislation made clear that the home does not insulate abusing husbands from societal intervention.”
August 31, 2009 at 9:51 am
Posted in: Anonymity, Privacy, Privacy (Gossip & Shaming), Social Network Websites, Web 2.0
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Interview on Internet Anonymity on Above the Law
posted by Daniel Solove
Over at Above the Law, Kashmir Hill has posted a Q&A with me about the “Skanks in NYC” blogger case. She also discusses with me how and why I became interested in privacy law.
August 25, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Posted in: Privacy, Privacy (Gossip & Shaming), Social Network Websites, Tort Law, Web 2.0
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Can You Be Sued for Unmasking an Anonymous Blogger?
posted by Daniel Solove
A model named Liskula Cohen was being attacked on a blog called Skanks in NYC. The author of the Skanks blog was anonymous. Kashmir Hill reports:
Cohen started pursuing the defamation suit against the anonymous ‘Skanks’ blogger in January after discovering the site, on which the blogger called Cohen a skank, a ho, and an old hag, among other nasty things, and posted photos of her, taken from various websites. Since Cohen needed the identity of the blogger in order to file the lawsuit against her, a judge in Manhattan granted Cohen’s request to force Google to reveal the e-mail address and IP address of the alleged defamer.
Cohen has since dropped her $3 million lawsuit. The unmasked blogger — Rosemary Port — plans to sue Google for $15 million for breaching its fiduciary duty to defend her anonymity.
Over at CyberSLAPP, a website maintained by EFF (disclosure: I’m on EFF’s advisory board), ACLU, CDT, EPIC, and Public Citizen, they have posted documents from the case, including the court’s order to Google to unmask the author of Skanks.
CyberSLAPP seeks to combat frivolous lawsuits to reveal another’s identity:
CyberSLAPP cases typically involve a person who has posted anonymous criticisms of a corporation or public figure on the Internet. The target of the criticism then files a frivolous lawsuit just so they can issue a subpoena to the Web site or Internet Service Provider (ISP) involved, discover the identity of their anonymous critic, and intimidate or silence them.
The Skanks in NYC raises a lot of interesting issues. I’ll tackle a few in this post.
1.Was Cohen’s lawsuit frivolous? Cohen might have a decent defamation lawsuit, but she subsequently dropped it when she found out Cohen’s identity. This behavior indicates she was using the lawsuit only to unmask the blogger. I agree with CyberSLAPP that such a practice should be restricted.
August 25, 2009 at 7:04 am
Posted in: Anonymity, Privacy, Privacy (Gossip & Shaming), Social Network Websites, Tort Law, Web 2.0
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Employers Researching Applicants Online
posted by Daniel Solove
Over at the New York Times Bits Blog, Jenna Wortham writes:
According to a new study conducted by Harris Interactive for CareerBuilder.com, 45 percent of employers questioned are using social networks to screen job candidates — more than double from a year earlier, when a similar survey found that just 22 percent of supervisors were researching potential hires on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn.
The study, which questioned 2,667 managers and human resource workers, found that 35 percent of employers decided not to offer a job to a candidate based on the content uncovered on a social networking site. (The survey has no margin of sampling error because it was not drawn from a representative nationwide sample but rather from volunteer participants.)
According to the report, most employers did their research on applicants by using Facebook. I wonder whether they respected the applicants’ privacy settings. If the applicants limited the access of their profile to a select group of friends, and the employer accessed that profile, then the employer might find themselves at odds with the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act — with possible criminal penalties!
What leads to job rejections? Photos! Photos involving nudity, drink, and drugs are the most frequent job killers.
As I discuss in The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet, people must learn to be more careful about what they post about themselves and others or else they will face serious consequences and lost opportunities.
In an earlier post regarding college admissions officers researching applicants online, I argued that most lack guidelines for how they conduct such research and for how they use the information they find. These questions also pertain to employers:
* Should such information be used? When?
* How heavily should it be relied upon?
* What kinds of things should negatively impact an applicant? Information about sex life? Drug use? Drinking? Bad behavior?
* What steps should be taken to make sure that the information was accurate?
* Should a distinction be made between information that people post about themselves and information that others have posted about them, perhaps invading their privacy without their consent?
* What steps should be taken to make sure that the information used in fact relates to the applicant and not to somebody else with the same name?
* Should people be notified that information online was used against them and be given an opportunity to be heard to explain it?
August 20, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Posted in: Employment Law, Privacy, Privacy (Gossip & Shaming), Social Network Websites, Web 2.0
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Could Yahoo! + Bing = Death to Google?
posted by Deven Desai
Yahoo! continues to be in the news as company that has lost its way. After failed merger problems, Yahoo has now sold its search business to the formerly evil and now oddly white knight(ish) Microsoft. It seems that Yahoo! and MS are now in a deal where MS’s Bing will power (and have some brand palcement) Yahoo!’s search. Others can go into the drop from about $46 billion to $4 or 5 billion sale price and other Yahoo! acts that make one wonder what the company is doing. For now, I want to remind folks about a little relationship called Yahoo! search powered by, wait for it, Google. Yes, Google. I wonder whether the G would be where it is today if Yahoo! had not given it that key placement. As one article pointed out
In a unique twist, Yahoo didn’t simply renew the deal for Google to be its “backup” partner, used only when Yahoo itself doesn’t have an answer. Instead, the company has embraced Google’s results even more tightly. Unveiled to the general public today is a new Yahoo search results page, where there is no longer a separation between Yahoo’s own human-powered listings and Google’s crawler-based results. Instead, the two are blended together.
Read the whole article for some fascinating perspectives on Yahoo! versus Google when Y was the big player. To be fair, Yahoo! appears to have had small chances to buy Google (but one might also say that after being apparently turned down for help by Yahoo!, the Google folks knew that they should not sell even at $3 billion). I for one don’t think I can say that Yahoo! should have known that Google was going to pop its IPO the way it did. For that matter had then CEO Terry Semmel bought Google, he would have had to take it public to show that it was worth the money. As Wired notes “Google’s revenue stood at a measly $240 million a year. Yahoo’s was about $837 million. And yet, with Yahoo’s stock price still hovering at a bubble-busted $7 a share, a $5 billion purchase price would essentially mean that Yahoo would have to spend its entire market value to swing the deal. It would be a merger of equals, not a purchase.”
So now we have the Yahoo! MS deal. It could be that Yahoo! is again running up the white flag about its ability to be a real technology/engineering company (”But now we have empirical evidence: At Yahoo, the marketers rule, and at Google the engineers rule. And for that, Yahoo is finally paying the price.”). But it may also be a way that MS will be able to grab Yahoo!’s customers, compete on search, and show that it still has the chops to beat back Google’s relentless drive to be all things to everyone. If so, maybe the two companies will balance each other out for a bit. Either way, it seems that as the NY Times pointed out, Yahoo! has exited the search game because as its CEO admits it cannot play in it at the level that MS and Google can (billions of dollars). Whether Yahoo! can find a new way to be relevant is another issue. The Times article describes Yahoo!’s severe dysfunction and what to me reads like classic Internet company arrogance. That being said, maybe Yahoo! is picking its best fight and with a little MS mixed in, Google will have to stay honest too. Or maybe this move is Yahoo!’s way of taking on Google while Yahoo! heads out of our world.
August 10, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Tags: Google, Microsoft, search engines, yahoo
Posted in: Google & Search Engines, Intellectual Property, Social Network Websites, Technology
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The Many Deaths of Privacy
posted by Frank Pasquale
As they follow the fascinating and heartening “Twitter Revolution” in Tehran, commentators worry that “the regime is prepared to detain dissidents — reportedly using Facebook and Twitter to locate them.” Yesterday also saw new reports of controversy over domestic surveillance by the US National Security Agency. Apparently the “agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants.” Commentators like Glenn Greenwald and our own Dan Solove have done a great job explaining the legal details of NSA surveillance. I just want to comment on some of broader social trends that explain the upward ratchet of surveillance around the world.
Worries about the “death of privacy” have been prevalent for some time. We increasingly lack control over (or even awareness of) the digital profiles kept about us by businesses and governments. Another form of privacy—that at the core of the public-private divide—has also been in decline over the past couple decades. As the essays in Freeman and Minow’s book Government by Contract show, “privatization” is often less an arm’s length transaction between government and business than a veritable marriage of institutions. The recent explosion of public-private partnerships in the finance and auto industries further erodes the distinction between government and business. As William J. Novak’s essay in Government by Contract observes, much of what we think of as purely private markets are creatures of state action:
Read the rest of this post »
June 18, 2009 at 8:00 am
Posted in: Google & Search Engines, Privacy, Privacy (Electronic Surveillance), Privacy (Law Enforcement), Privacy (National Security), Social Network Websites
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Barnes v. Yahoo!, CDA Immunity, and Promissory Estoppel
posted by Daniel Solove
The Ninth Circuit recently decided Barnes v. Yahoo!, a case with some very interesting holdings relating to the Communications Decency Act § 230 as well as promissory estoppel. I wrote about this case briefly in my book, The Future of Reputation, long before it made it up to the Ninth Circuit.
Celia Barnes’ ex-boyfriend created fake profiles in her name on Yahoo. Moreover, as the court relates:
The profiles contained nude photographs of Barnes and her boyfriend, taken without her knowledge, and some kind of open solicitation, whether express or implied is unclear, to engage in sexual intercourse. The ex-boyfriend then conducted discussions in Yahoo’s online “chat rooms,” posing as Barnes and directing male correspondents to the fraudulent profiles he had created. The profiles also included the addresses, real and electronic, and telephone number at Barnes’ place of employment. Before long, men whom Barnes did not know were peppering her office with emails, phone calls, and personal visits, all in the expectation of sex.
Barnes contacted Yahoo to get the profiles taken down:
May 19, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Posted in: Constitutional Law, Cyberlaw, First Amendment, Law School, Media Law, Privacy, Privacy (Gossip & Shaming), Social Network Websites, Tort Law, Web 2.0
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Online Symposium: Citron’s Cyber Civil Rights
posted by Frank Pasquale
From tomorrow through Thursday, Concurring Opinions will be hosting a number of scholars invited to discuss Danielle Citron’s work Cyber Civil Rights. Responding to controversies over online attacks, Citron argues the following:
Social networking sites and blogs have increasingly become breeding grounds for anonymous online groups that attack women, people of color, and members of other traditionally disadvantaged groups. These destructive groups target individuals with defamation, threats of violence, and technology-based attacks that silence victims and concomitantly destroy their privacy. Victims go offline or assume pseudonyms to prevent future attacks, impoverishing online dialogue and depriving victims of the social and economic opportunities associated with a vibrant online presence. Attackers manipulate search engines to reproduce their lies and threats for employers and clients to see, creating digital “scarlet letters” that ruin reputations. . . .
Web 2.0 technologies accelerate mob behavior. With little reason to expect self-correction of this intimidation of vulnerable individuals, the law must respond. General criminal statutes and tort law proscribe much of the mobs’ destructive behavior, but the harm they inflict also ought to be understood and addressed as civil rights violations. Civil rights suits reach the societal harm that would otherwise go unaddressed and would play a crucial expressive role. Acting against these attacks does not offend First Amendment principles when they consist of defamation, true threats, intentional infliction of emotional distress, technological sabotage, and bias-motivated abuse aimed to interfere with a victim’s employment opportunities. To the contrary, it helps preserve vibrant online dialogue and promote a culture of political, social, and economic equality.
As I’ve noted before, I think this piece breaks new ground in applying venerable laws to the online environment. In this cyber-symposium, we propose to discuss the following issues:
What can the law do to respond to these threats?
How we deter harassment while promoting legitimate speech?
How do we balance the privacy rights of speakers and those they speak about in the new communicative landscape created by sites like AutoAdmit, Juicy Campus, Facebook, and anonymous message boards?
A list of scholars invited to discuss these issues appears below:
April 13, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Posted in: Anonymity, Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Culture, Current Events, Cyberlaw, Feminism and Gender, Google & Search Engines, Law and Inequality, Privacy, Privacy (Electronic Surveillance), Privacy (Gossip & Shaming), Social Network Websites, Technology
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Facebook Recants
posted by Daniel Solove
The other day, I blogged about Facebook’s change in its Terms of Service, indicating it would keep user data potentially forever. In response to a public backlash, Facebook is restoring its old Terms of Service and will work to revise its Terms of Service to better define user rights. From CNN:
Thousands of indignant members either canceled their accounts or created online petitions. Among them were more than 64,000 who joined a group called “The People Against the new Terms of Service.”
On Monday, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg tried to quell the controversy by saying the company’s philosophy is that “people own their information and control who they share it with.”
But members were not appeased because the site did not fix its Terms of Use. The company, in its post Wednesday, said it was returning to its previous Terms of Use because of the “feedback” it had received.
“As Mark expressed in his blog post on Monday, it was never our intention to confuse people or make them uneasy about sharing on Facebook,” company spokesman Barry Schnitt said in a blog post. “I also want to be very clear that Facebook does not, nor have we ever, claimed ownership over people’s content. Your content belongs to you.”
Schnitt said the company is in the process of rewording its Terms of Use in “simple language that defines Facebook’s rights much more specifically.”
Facebook continually sparks privacy dust ups, but to its credit, Facebook is quick to respond and reform its policy in response.
February 18, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Posted in: Privacy, Privacy (Consumer Privacy), Social Network Websites, Web 2.0
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The Vexing Problem of Shared Personal Data
posted by Daniel Solove
I blogged earlier about the recent privacy kerfuffle with Facebook’s potentially permanent control over user data. In that post, I critiqued the “trust us” response that Facebook and so many companies make when responding to issues involving the use of people’s data.
There is, however, another argument Zuckerberg raises in response to Facebook’s data retention policy. He writes:
When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created—one in the person’s sent messages box and the other in their friend’s inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message.
Zuckerberg is raising a rather thorny issue involving shared data. Although the “trust us” argument is rather specious, the shared data argument is much more difficult. One of the reasons why Facebook wants to maintain user data even after a user has left Facebook is that a lot of Facebook data is shared between friends. Facebook claims that it doesn’t want to allow users who leave Facebook to permanently delete their data from all parts of Facebook since their data appears on their friends’ Facebook pages. Zuckerberg also mentions the fact that email messages sent from one friend to another leave a copy in a friend’s inbox. One of the thorny issues with digital information is that it is shared.
What should Facebook do when a user wants to remove his or her data from all parts of Facebook, including their data on the pages of their friends? There are several ways of dealing with this:
(a) allow the user to remove it completely wherever it is;
(b) notify the people whose profiles contain the information and seek their consent before removing it; or
(c) not allow the user to remove it.
Facebook appears to have chosen (c). Before attacking or praising Facebook’s choice, consider the following questions:
February 18, 2009 at 12:00 am
Posted in: Privacy, Privacy (Consumer Privacy), Social Network Websites, Web 2.0
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“Please Trust Us”: Facebook and Control of Personal Data
posted by Daniel Solove
Recently, Facebook changed its Terms of Service (TOS). According to the New York Times:
This month, when Facebook updated its terms, it deleted a provision that said users could remove their content at any time, at which time the license would expire. Further, it added new language that said Facebook would retain users’ content and licenses after an account was terminated. . . .
The changes in the terms of service had gone mostly unnoticed until Sunday, when the blog Consumerist cited them and interpreted them to mean that “anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later.”
Given the widespread popularity of Facebook — by some measurements the most popular social network with 175 million active users worldwide — that claim attracted attention immediately.
The blog post by Consumerist, part of the advocacy group Consumers Union, received more than 300,000 views. Users created Facebook groups to oppose the changes. To some of the thousands who commented online, the changes meant: “Facebook owns you.”
The new and old TOS both state:
You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.
However, the new TOS does not contain the following language that the old TOS contains:
February 17, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Posted in: Privacy, Privacy (Consumer Privacy), Social Network Websites, Web 2.0
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Can You Buy an Internship on Snobster?
posted by Frank Pasquale
Timothy Noah has described the growth industry in internship sales at Slate:
[T]he internship-selling racket has slipped the surly bonds of philanthropy and entered the for-profit marketplace. An outfit called the University of Dreams guarantees placement or your money back. Summer-internship fees (the University of Dreams prefers to call it “tuition”) range from $5,499 to $9,499. For 3 percent extra, you can pay on an installment plan. The interns have been placed with firms like Hill and Knowlton and Smith Barney (did a rich, dumb intern start the credit crunch?)
“It’s a huge misconception to say this is a program for rich kids,” Eric Lochtefeld, CEO of University of Dreams, told the Journal. “The average student comes from the middle class, and their parents dig deep.” To whatever extent that were true, inegalitarianism would shade into encyclopedia-salesman-style exploitation.
Cyberspace appears to be catching up to real space in stratification potential:
February 10, 2009 at 11:45 am
Posted in: Economic Analysis of Law, Social Network Websites
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Criminalizing Google’s YouTube in Italy
posted by Daniel Solove
In Italy, a rather disturbing prosecution is taking place. Google officials, including Chief Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer, are being criminally prosecuted for a video somebody else uploaded to YouTube. According to an article by Tracey Bentley in the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ The Privacy Advisor:
The video that sparked the investigation was captured in a Turin classroom. Four high school boys were recorded taunting a young man with Down syndrome, and hitting the 17-year-old with a tissue box. One of the boys uploaded the footage to Google Video’s Italian site on September 8, 2006.
According to Google, more than 200,000 videos are uploaded to Google Video each day. Under EU legislation incorporated into Italian law in 2003, Internet service providers are not responsible for monitoring third-party content on their sites, but are required to remove content considered offensive if they receive a complaint about it. Between November 6 and 7, 2006, Google received two separate requests for the removal of the video–one from a user, and one from the Italian Interior Ministry, the authority responsible for investigating Internet-related crimes. Google removed the video on November 7, 2006, within 24 hours of receiving the requests.
Nonetheless, Milan public prosecutor Francesco Cajani decided that by allowing the 191-second clip onto its site, Google executives were in breach of Italian penal code. . . .
Cajani is prosecuting Google as an Internet content provider. Unlike Internet service providers, Italian penal code states that Internet content providers are responsible for the third-party content posted to their sites. This is essentially the same law regulating newspaper and television publishers.
I’ve been quite critical of very broad immunity for websites or ISPs that host defamatory or privacy invasive content of others. See Chapter 6 of The Future of Reputation. However, I find this Italian prosecution extremely troubling. And if I find it troubling, one can only imagine how apoplectic Professor Eric Goldman will be!
First, this is a criminal prosecution, and I’m generally very troubled for criminal prosecutions for defamation or privacy invasions. There might be some limited circumstances where criminal liability is warranted, though I believe that the problem is best deal with through civil liability, not criminal. While the prospect of civil liability can certainly chill speech, criminal law is an even more serious threat, and therefore, it shouldn’t be treated in the same way. Free speech protections should therefore be greater when criminal liability is involved.
Second, Google is not the content provider here. It shouldn’t be prosecuted as one. Apparently, from the reports (I haven’t seen the specific Italian law), Italy has a law that resembles Communications Decency Act (CDA), 47 U.S.C. § 230, which immunizes a website or ISP for the content posted by others. I agree with this general immunity. However, I believe that if a website or ISP is on notice that content is defamatory or invasive of privacy, then it must take down that material or lose its immunity from civil liability. Under the CDA, as interpreted by the courts, websites and ISPs are immune even after having knowledge that content posted on their sites is defamatory or invasive of privacy. I’ve argued that immunity under these circumstances is going too far. From what I’ve read, Italian law adopts the position I advocate.
But Google complied with the law and took down the videos after being notified. Thus, I don’t understand what Google did wrong. I don’t understand how it can be deemed the content provider. If Google officials can be criminally prosecuted any time a person uploads a defamatory or privacy invasive video to YouTube, it’s hard to see how they can possibly avoid running afoul of the law. YouTube and much of Web 2.0 would pose massive risks of criminal liability.
So as one who has strongly advocated for less immunity for defamatory and privacy invasive material online, even I find Italy’s prosecution of Fleischer and other Google executives to be quite outrageous and unjustified.
If anyone has a link to the Italian ISP immunity legislation in English, as well as more information about the specific criminal charges against Google, please let me know.
February 4, 2009 at 7:53 pm
Posted in: Privacy, Privacy (Gossip & Shaming), Privacy (Law Enforcement), Social Network Websites, Web 2.0
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The Lori Drew Trial: Verdict
posted by Daniel Solove
A verdict has been reached in the Lori Drew case. Kim Zetter reports:
Lori Drew, the 49-year-old woman charged in the first federal cyberbullying case, was cleared of felony computer-hacking charges by a jury Wednesday morning, but convicted of three misdemeanors. The jury deadlocked on a remaining felony charge of conspiracy.
After just over a day of deliberation, the six-man, six-woman jury acquitted Drew of three felony charges of violating the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, in an emotionally charged case that stemmed from a 2006 MySpace hoax targeting a 13-year-old girl, who later committed suicide.
Tina Meier, the mother of the girl, shook her head silently from the gallery as the verdict was read.
Prosecutors claimed Drew and others obtained unauthorized access to MySpace by creating a fake profile for a nonexistent 16-year-old boy named “Josh Evans.” The account was used to flirt with, and then reject, 13-year-old old Megan Meier. The case hinged on the government’s novel argument that violating MySpace’s terms of service for the purpose of harming another was the legal equivalent of computer hacking, and Drew faced a maximum sentence of five years in prison for each charge.
But on Wednesday, jurors found Drew guilty only of three counts of gaining unauthorized access to MySpace for the purpose of obtaining information on Megan Meier — misdemeanors that potentially carry up to a year in prison, but most likely will result in no time in custody. The jury unanimously rejected the three felony computer hacking charges that alleged the unauthorized access was part of a scheme to intentionally inflict emotional distress on Megan.
November 26, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Posted in: Privacy, Privacy (Gossip & Shaming), Social Network Websites, Web 2.0
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The Lori Drew Case: Why Not Rule on the Motions?
posted by Daniel Solove
According to Kim Zetter’s account of the Lori Drew trial, Judge Wu has postponed ruling on any of the legal issues until after the jury’s verdict:
When the prosecution rested its case Friday at about 2:00 p.m., defense attorney H. Dean Steward moved for an immediate dismissal, based on testimony that proved Drew never saw MySpace’s contract, and wasn’t the one who set up the account and accepted the terms.
U.S. District Judge George Wu asked both sides to file written briefs on the issue over the weekend, and allowed testimony to continue in the case.
Why not rule on it now? Judge Wu hasn’t ruled on the merits of how the CFAA should be interpreted, whether it is unconstitutionally vague, and now whether or not the prosecution, as a matter of law, has failed to prove the requisite mens rea. Why won’t he rule on any of these issues?
The only reason I can think of is that he’s waiting to see if the jury acquits Drew, which then moots the issues. This is the only scenario I can think of in which he won’t eventually have to rule on the motions.
Why not just issue a ruling one way or the other? That’s what I thought judges are supposed to do. Is there something I’m missing here about his judicial strategy?
November 24, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Posted in: Privacy, Privacy (Gossip & Shaming), Social Network Websites, Web 2.0
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The Lori Drew Case: Sarah Drew’s Testimony
posted by Daniel Solove
Over at Wired’s Threat Level blog, Kim Zetter’s excellent coverage of the Lori Drew trial continues. In this post, she discusses the testimony of Lori Drew’s daughter Sarah:
The girl’s testimony, if true, supports the defense’s assertions that Lori Drew was unaware of Meier’s previous suicide attempt until after Meier killed herself in 2006.
The younger Drew, who prosecutors say was involved in the creation of the fake MySpace account through which Meier was bullied, denied playing any role in the creation of the account, although she admitted she was present when many of the messages were written and when the final message was sent to Meier telling her the world “would be a better place without you.” She insisted she told Ashley Grills, who confessed to writing the last message, not to send it, although she didn’t say why she told this to Grills.
She said it was Grills — who has been granted immunity by prosecutors — who devised the plan, created the account and sent the messages. Neither she nor her mother knew the account was created until “after the fact,” and neither one was home when Grills clicked on the terms of service to create the Josh Evans profile. She also said her mother wasn’t home when Grills sent the final message to Meier.
The girl’s words seemed designed to strike at the heart of the conspiracy charge against her mother, which asserts that she conspired with her daughter and Grills to intentionally violate the MySpace terms of service in order to inflict intentional emotional distress on Meier.
Grills had said that both Drews were with her when she created the account, but that none of them had read the terms of service. That testimony raised questions about whether Lori Drew could be convicted of conspiracy if she didn’t click to agree on the terms of service or even know they existed.
November 24, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Posted in: Privacy, Privacy (Gossip & Shaming), Social Network Websites, Web 2.0
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