Woman Sues Blockbuster for Facebook Privacy Violations

Chris Blanc writes "A Texas woman has sued Blockbuster over its activities relating to Facebook's Beacon tool. The movie rental service has been reporting user activity to Facebook since Beacon launched last November, which the plaintiff says is a violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act."

Re:More and more problems

[OMNIpotusCOM]

While you have a point, they can be fun if you use them the correct way. It's kind of like creating ghost Amazon.com accounts and searching for really f-ed up stuff, or just opposites (Marilyn Manson/Britney Spears, etc...), then going to your main page to see what they recommend for you. Same thing with FaceBook and the like... except there you have to be careful not to get on a government watch list by watching too many Michael Moore movies and because you're like 30 and have nothing but 13 year olds on your friends list.

Re:Blockbuster makes you waive that

[Anonymous Coward]

Blockbuster's user agreement includes a wavier of your rights under the Video Privacy Protection Act. That's why I don't shop there.

not sure how it works in the U.S.A, but here in New Zealand, you *cannot* contract yourself out of the law. e.g: if an employment contract you sign states you waive the right to opt out of working on public holidays, that clause does not apply. Surely you'd have something similar in the states?

Re:FaceBook is evil.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope people realize everyone does stupid shit sometimes and we can get over it.

Tell that to the hiring mgr. or HR person. And these days, just to apply to a job, you have to provide your SSN (Not just Government, Home Depot and other corps).

It doesn't really matter if they personally don't have a problem but if they perceive that their customers will, then you're SOL.

Re:FaceBook is evil.

[Tony Hoyle]

That's more likely.

A society where everyone pretty much knows whats going on with their friends/aquantences without all this victorian privacy bullshit sounds much more healthy.. and that's what's happening, slowly.

Yes but it's illegal.

[goombah99]

Your right to privacy on video rental records used to be dictated by what ever agreement you had or lacked. But then Robert Bork was nominated to the supreme court. At that time a reporter obtained his video rental history and published it. The politically charged backlash created a federal law mandating the privacy of those records.

In otherwords, video rental records have a protected status that is federally recognized. it's not the same as most other information about you. it might even be more protected than your credit history!

Now this is a civil suit ($$$) not a prosecution, so that law is only out there saying what the standard of conduct expected of blockbuster is and is not a direct factor in the trial. I would guess that block busters agreements reasonably allow them to share your data with 3rd party business affiliates or for purposes of debt collection. However, I think the expectation is that your records are not public records.

Facebook might be the loosely defined bussiness affiliate, but most people would probably say it's public. And you did not really intend to direct them to share your borrowing records, nor at the time you agreed with facebook to share certain data could you have anticipated that blockbuster would become a bussiness affiliate. They really needed to negotiate that with you.

finally just because you sign a "wavier" does not mean you cannot sue. As I understand it, you can never sign away your right to sue. The wavier simply makes it hard to win.

I note that recently Netflix ran into a problem too. Their supposedly anonymized rental records used in their contest to improve movie selection turns out to have enough information content that clever googling can re-associate names with a large fraction of the people in the data base. (e.g. they mention movies they watched somewhere on the web and this can be correlated). Some group in texas actually did the reverse calculations and showed it worked.

Re:Blockbuster makes you waive that

[canajin56]

Doesn't slashdot publish your content (including your username) at its sole discression, without any compensation to you?

Re:More and more problems

[denmarkw00t]

Social networking sites, and Facebook in particular, seem to be increasingly undesirable.

I concur - and it doesn't help that I haven't had much desire to do any social networking lately, save for a quick check-in if I was expecting something. I cleared my Facebook account of most information and limited my applications to a handful (photos, events, the stuff that isn't so invasive) and tightened my privacy. There were a lot of changes to what was public and how public that I missed in my absence.

Re:More and more problems

[chrispalasz]

I find this article particularly interesting because I had the same problem and complaint.

Less than a month ago I signed up for Blockbuster Online, which I've tried before and liked. Suddenly I'm getting all this Facebook spam from blockbuster asking me to approve their request to tell the world every single movie I'm renting.

I didn't click any check box giving Blockbuster permission to access any of my Facebook information. Not only that, but I had to go to the Blockbuster website and find out HOW they got my information and how to stop it. Finding that information was not obvious. You wouldn't be able to find it by browsing the site. You have to do a search through their help section.

In the end, Blockbuster (from their online store site) told me to use the Facebook option to block their website from accessing my profile if I didn't want their spam.

I definitely see it as a violation of privacy; especially considering they didn't even ask and offered no option of their own for stopping the spam.

Re:Easy

[sumdumass]

Perhaps instead of a deletion, a {work unfriendly} advisory in brackets could be added.

There is a real problem with some links in some places. Especially when they are presented at a site that is somewhat "work/family safe" oriented. I say safe orented because it is well known that people surf this site at work or in front of the kids. Purposely hiding the true origin of a link to trick people into viewing it is about as stupid as it can get.

And no, it isn't censorship to delete a link that is fed through a proxy in order to obfuscate the origin so that people who wouldn't otherwise click on it could be tricked into doing so. If the point was to post a link to something, then the link to it would be posted and not bounced from a assumed safe domian. In case your wondering, http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0oGkwkgCAlIK5YAl_5XNyoA/SIG=1hr6qq1f/EXP=1208637856/**http%3A//slashblog.notlong.com/ [yahoo.com] is the same as going to http://.slashblog.notlong.com/ [notlong.com]

And yes, I purposely broke both links. The first one can be followed and anyone with half a brain can fix the other after opening it. It you have doubts, you can go up and click on the original to verify.