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Comment RSSFacebook Likes Against the Law?
Written by pacelattinDecember 19, 2011 # 8:17 am # Industry News, Legal Challenges, Specials # 13 Comments
Did you know that Facebook “likes” could be illegal? Accordig to a federal judge, Lucy Koh, a lawsuit against Facebook is allowed to continue. The lawsuit claims that sponsored stories, where people like the stories are in violation of California’s Right of Publicity Statute, which says that permission must be given to use a photo or name of a person.
“[The] plaintiffs have articulated a coherent theory of how they were economically injured by the misappropriation of their names, photographs and likeness,” she wrote in her ruling.
Judge Koh’s decision means that plaintiffs may pursue claims that the company’s sponsored ads violate state law and are fraudulent, however the report ads that she did dismiss a claim that it is “unjustly enriching” itself through its sponsored advertising.
Frank Reed at Marketing Pilgrim had an interesting comment:
It is obviously Facebook’s desire to take every bit of information they gather from their users and turn it into dollars. Wait, you mean the company’s altruistic PR about connecting the world and making it a better place isn’t the real reason that they do what they do, you ask? No, Virginia, it’s not and Santa isn’t real either. Facebook always tries to come off as the kid who didn’t realize that what they were doing might be wrong. They exemplify the “ask for forgiveness rather than permission” mantra that runs through many Internet players.
Written by pacelattin
Pace Lattin is one of the top experts in interactive advertising, affiliate marketing. Pace Lattin is known for his dedication to ethics in marketing, and focus on compliance and fraud in the industry, and has written numerous articles for publications from MediaPost, ClickZ, ADOTAS and his own blogs.
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Facebook Likes Illegal? http://t.co/nT7y8VPp
Facebook explains in its TOS that use of the like button effectively gives them permission to use your comments and likeness. Thus, if you are a FB user, you have already given permission to FB to use your likeness and comments. WEveryone who wants to set up a FB account has to agree to the FB TOS.
I know FB has been guilty of updating their TOS without getting users to explicitly agree to the changes (which is stupid, FB could require consumers to agree to TOS changes before continuing to use the service). This doesn’t seem to be the issue here, though. I don’t understand how the judge didn’t take the TOS into consideration when allowing the suit to proceed.
The FB TOS explicitly covers these items in these paragraphs: :
2) Sharing Your Content and Information
You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition:
1) For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.
and more specifically here:
10.) About Advertisements and Other Commercial Content Served or Enhanced by Facebook
Our goal is to deliver ads that are not only valuable to advertisers, but also valuable to you. In order to do that, you agree to the following:
1. You can use your privacy settings to limit how your name and profile picture may be associated with commercial, sponsored, or related content (such as a brand you like) served or enhanced by us. You give us permission to use your name and profile picture in connection with that content, subject to the limits you place.
2. We do not give your content or information to advertisers without your consent.
3. You understand that we may not always identify paid services and communications as such.
I can’t imagine the plaintiffs will eventually prevail. If they do, it seems to me the judge is saying that TOS do not matter, and if that is the case that is very bad news for the affiliate industry and the internet advertising industry in general.
This is great, but now for me I dont like facebook because even you are not using your account when you open it there some porn that they post into my wall I dont know where did they got my account and my password..
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I’m sorry but I think this is just silly. In this day and age, not knowing the implications of sharing data is a crime onto itself. These people are resourceful enough to pursue an obscure law suit, but weren’t able to restrain themselves from clicking the like but – or, heavens forbid – read Facebook’s TOS?
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Apparently the reason the judge allowed this to continue is bacause that even if the consumers read the TOS when they signed up, they would not have found anything about thism as it was not in there. The judge is not considering the TOS a defense because FB changed the TOS.
It seems to me that FB made me agree to the new TOS before continuing to use the site after the TOS changed. If they did, then the judge should have dismissed the suit. If they did not, then shame on their in-house counsil.
Are we actually speaking of facebook likes; When you like something on facebook and it posts to your profile?
Is Facebook under scutiny because it shares pictures and things like that?
It makes sense to me that we agreed to the terms of service and granted permission for this kind of information to be shared.
What I’m confused about is the advertisements being referred to on this post.
Are you saying we get associated with advertisements we like and they post to our profile? If that’s the case I thought this was a common understanding and okay.
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Sponsored Stories – ie, a story that you like. IN theory this wasn’t in the T&C. Either way, I think the law requires explicit permission?
While I don’t have an account with Facebook, I am interested in how this lawsuit proceeds. Thanks so much for the share.
As they say, the law is an ass.
One has to be careful in pre-judging the rightness or not of the judge in making his pronouncements as it currently stands because most of us do not have all the material facts.
Perhaps, just perhaps, there is a loophole being exploited by the plaintiff. Only time will tell.
I dont understand this: permission must be given to use a photo or name of a person in sponsored stories? Is this the issue? But if you are already on Facebook,their TOS requires you to upload your profile photo and name which shall appear on all your activities on Facebook,whether it be commenting,wall posts etc.and yes including sponsored stories.Is the judge saying we should have anonymous names and photos on Facebook Likes? This is ridiculous.Leave Facebook alone.
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We know facebook is a social media but why is it there are such things that are not necessary like porn video and pictures.so we have to be careful.
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I agree with that Kate because I encounter like this before they hack my account and then they post of lots a porn video in my wall and that is the worse day of my life..
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Facebook could have easilly avoided this by simply requiring users to agree to the TOS before they used the site. It is standard industry practice to do so, and most people would have no issue with it. In any case, most TOS are simply agreed to and not read, just as with software ULAs.
There are privacy settings on FB accounts with can prevent others from posting on your wall. The solution? Simple, really. Enable them, or discontinue the common practice of approving everyone one and their brother as “friends” even if you barely know them.