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Suing Facebook & Blockbuster Over Movie Rentals

mscriv

mscriv

macrumors 601
Original poster
Aug 14, 2008
4,933
624
Dallas, Texas
A North Texas woman is suing Facebook and Blockbuster for allegedly violating her privacy.

According to Cathryn Harris, Facebook was posting alerts on her profile each time she rented a movie from Blockbuster. The updates featured her name and the movie title she had rented, Harris said.

"I wasn't renting any movies that I'm ashamed of, but what if I had been? It's nobody's business," Harris said. "They need to follow the laws and respect their customers' privacy and not try to go behind the curtain."

The 25-year-old homemaker said she made the discovery last year when she rented the 1985 adventure film "The Jewel of the Nile," starring Kathleen Turner, Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito. She said an alert appeared on her Facebook profile detailing the transaction.

As a result, Harris filed two lawsuits -- one last year against Blockbuster and one against Facebook last month. The suits claim a partnership between the two companies allowed Blockbuster to send Harris' movie-renting habits to Facebook without fair opportunity to opt out.

"You had to kind of find out about it on your own and then opt out of the certain companies, but if you didn't know about it, then you didn't know you needed to opt out," Harris said.

According to Harris' attorneys, the companies violated a federal law -- the Video Privacy Protection Act .
Click to expand...

Interesting.... I'm in trouble if Facebook starts posting my purchases at fast food restaurants. :D

Link to Full Story
 
Wirelessly posted (Nokia 5800 Tube XpressMusic : Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.4; U; Series60/5.0 Nokia5800d-1/21.0.101; Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 ) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413)

Well people should certainly sue for money. Corporations don't have morals. What they have is a desire to be profitable. I'm not trying to say that corporations are all evil. Not at all. However, they exist to make money for shareholders, and if money is all a corporation understands, then the punishment should hit them in a way that's comprehendible.
 
I have been kind of trapped like this as well with the former Skype TV (don't remember the name, but it's same creators). It's really intrusive but happily I noticed that quickly enough.

I thing this woman is totally right !
 
I’m confused. What did Blockbuster do? Ask for her e-mail address then link that with her Facebook account? Then, Facebook created an automated post describing what she rented?

If she used Facebook Connect to sign-in to Blockbuster, it’s her fault. But if it’s the other way around, wow get em’.
 
There is an icon on the Blockbuster website linking you to their Facebook profile, but there isn't any Facebook Connect link.
 
Facebook requires that you press Allow to let an external site post updates to your facebook. She must have pressed it accidentally at some point. She'll almost certainly lose this lawsuit; or be paid off.
 
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