Week 8: Facebook’s “Beacon” System

Texas Woman Sues Facebook for Privacy Voilations – Fox News

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,571589,00.html?test=latestnews

Facebook has a feature which allows the service to connect to other services which you are signed up for to grab and transfer information to your wall.  In this case, the plaintiff alleges that Facebook allowed Blockbuster to display her movie rental habits on her wall.  She is suing for violating the Video Privacy Protection Act.  Facebook received some negative press because of a small complication in their new Beacon system- even though a user can opt-in or opt-out of a service which asks you to post updates to your wall, the Beacon service still posted messages.    The woman, Cathryn Harris, claims that she was unaware that FB was posting the movies she rented from BlockBuster on her wall.  The case is still undecided, but relating to the book and what we learned in class, could Facebook use arguments pertaining safe harbor provisions?  Probably not since they are directly responsible for the creation of their broad networking system.  However, most online users of sites like Blockbuster or those who make use of applications on Facebook are usually prompted with a message asking them if it is OK for the 3rd party service to post to the wall – and it works now; it might have been a problem in the past, but from my experiences, the message shuts off posts if you deny it.  It was unclear in this story if she was ever asked such a question on the site and whether BlockBuster (or Facebook), just allegedly started posting to her site.  Now that Facebook has revised their Terms of Service / Agreement, would she be able to win this case?