Can Blockbuster be Sued Over Facebook/Beacon? 102
An anonymous reader writes "A professor at the New York Law School is arguing that Blockbuster violated the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988 when movie choices that Facebook members made on its Web site were made available to other members of the social network via Beacon. The law basically prohibits video rental outfits from disclosing rental choice of their customers to anyone else without specific written consent. Facebook's legal liability in all of this is unclear; with Blockbuster it's a straightforward case of not complying with the VPPA, the law professor says."
Re:Yes, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Beacon was particularly controversial because it was not only opt-out, you couldn't opt-out of it altogether, you could only opt-out on a per-participating company basis *after* that company had already published a story. Facebook has since made changes due to the backlash the original version caused.
This isn't a case of users making information available and someone else using it, this is the Blockbuster website making available information about its users who also use Facebook, apparently in direct contravention of this legislation.
Less ironic than you think. (Score:5, Informative)
The only reason the VPPA [wikipedia.org] exists is because the video records of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork [wikipedia.org] were leaked. To this day, the act of invading the privacy of a politician for political advantage is called "borking".
Bork's video rentals were unremarkable, so there were no skeletons in Bork's closet. But from that day on, every Senator and Congressman knew that their video rental histories were also subject to exposure to news agencies, and Washington acted to protect itself. If you've got something to hide, you've got plenty to fear, and Washington was evidently so terrified that they made the VPPA apply to regular citizens, not just politicians.
The only way we're going to get a pro-privacy law out of the government is for some enterprising hacker to leak the clickstream of everyone in the government about 20 years from now. Today, that won't work -- because 99% of government officials don't even use the "series of tubes", let alone depend on it for their gay hookers and pr0n. 20 years from now, that will have changed, and a similar Bork-style scandal will erupt. Just imagine the kinds of privacy laws we'd have if someone like Sen. Larry "I'm Not Gay" Craig (R-estroom) had been bound for higher office, NSA leaked their logs of his Intertube traffic.
We know when you've been sleeping,
We know when you're awake,
We know if you've been bad or good,
So be good for goodness' sake!
Oh, you better not surf!
And zip up your fly!
Stop tappin' your toes and trollin' for guys,
Election season's comin' to town!
Re:Yes, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Thanks for contacting Blockbuster Online Customer Care.
I'm very sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused. When you log in to your BLOCKBUSTER Online account, the site uses "cookies" to determine if you have ever visited Facebook.com [facebook.com]. (Cookies: a collection of information, usually including a username and the current date and time, stored on the local computer of a person using the Internet. It is used by websites to identify users who have previously registered or visited the site.)
If cookies detect that you have a Facebook account, regardless of whether or not you have installed the Movie Clique(TM) application, then activities on blockbuster.com [blockbuster.com] such as rating movies or adding movies to your Queue will be sent as notifications to your mini-feed and friends' profiles. You will see a "toast" for each action resulting in a notification. If you want to permanently disable the Facebook integration on blockbuster.com [blockbuster.com], you can easily change these settings on Facebook by clicking on Privacy Settings for External Websites. Under "Allow these websites to send stories to my profile" for Blockbuster, click "Never" and Save.
You may see a pop-up on blockbuster.com [blockbuster.com] which introduces Movie Clique(TM) encourages you to link your BLOCKBUSTER Online® account to your Facebook profile. If you don't want to see the screen pop anymore, click the "Do Not Show This Again" box and click Save. I hope this information helps, feel free to contact me anytime.
So basically, they snag your facebook cookie, then they add your rental info on your account without asking permission, forcing itself on your account, and announcing away. It's up to you to then uninstall that shit.
BBOnline: See you in court!
Re:Question for any expert... (Score:4, Informative)
The question is, do you trust these 3rd party apps to not store your personal info from your profile?
For reference, halfway down this page [facebook.com] is a decent list of profile information available to developers.
Re:Pissed off the wrong guy (Score:5, Informative)
From Wikipedia...
During debate over his nomination, Bork's video rental history was leaked to the press, which led to the enactment of the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act. His video rental history was unremarkable, and included such harmless titles as A Day at the Races, Ruthless People and The Man Who Knew Too Much. The list of rentals was originally printed by Washington D.C.'s City Paper.[5]