RadioShack Stung in Privacy Suit

Say it ain't so.  RadioShack may have hacked.

In an interesting privacy rights law suit being prosecuted right here in Detroit, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Radio Shack just lost its motion for Rule 12b(6) summary judgment. 
The case, pending before Judge Victoria Roberts, now heads to trial.

The claim is that a RadioShack customer purchased a new cell phone and had his data transferred at a RadioShack store; the old phone was to be recycled.  A RadioShack employee allegedly accessed the images on the customer's old phone, saw some apparently objectionable pics from the customer taken at his place of employment, and in a "Big Brother"-like maneuver, sent the pics to the customer's employer.

The customer was fired and he is now suing RadioShack for violating his right to privacy and for breach of RadioShack's own cell phone disposal privacy policy.

Noting that very little discovery has been conducted in the case, chastizing RadioShack's counsel for raising two seminal "sufficiency-of-the-pleadings" cases in a reply brief, and intimating that questions of fact for a jury may exist, the Court denied RadioShack's motion for summary judgment.  The complete order is here.

One of the fact questions spotted by Judge Roberts was the scope of the consent the customer may have given to the store in accessing his images on his old cell phone. 

Imagine going into a RadioShack outlet to simply transfer your cell phone data [i.e. your digital life as you know it] to a new phone, and you wind-up getting fired because some entry level employee decides to police the content of your data, and forward selected portions of that data to your employer.  My guess is that this case will probably settle, and confidentially. 

In my humble yet professional opinion, RadioShack has some significant exposure on this claim.  At least they would if I was on the jury.

If you think your right to privacy has been compromised on-line and would like a free consultation to assess your potential claim, contact our law firm.

http://www.waterfordlegal.com/

info@waterfordlegal.com

Privacy & Intellectual Property on Facebook

This post is the original content of Geoff Livingston, a blogger from the Washington D.C. area recognized as a social media and blogging "expert" by the Washington Post.  His 2007 book, Now is Gone was hailed by the WSJ as a valuable resource for those interested in mining social media.

The topics of privacy and intellectual property relative to Facebook are intertwined and receive recurring attention.  Here is Geoff's recent post:

Have you read Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities? I decided to after talking to a Facebook IP lawyer. There are some serious dangers for content marketers on Facebook:

“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”).”

AND

“You will not tag users or send email invitations to non-users without their consent.”

If someone is using content as a means to market to their potential customers, the first statement presents huge issues. It’s clear that protecting IP is hard on Facebook given these terms.

While the same statement offers IP protections, Facebook is clearly soft on enforcement. Basically, for someone to get in trouble for using your copyrighted content without your permission, it requires someone to “repeatedly infringe” for Facebook to take action.

All in all, your content is not safe on Facebook, IMO. It’s best to use secondary services such as a blog, a video site or a photo site, and link back in if protecting copyright is an issue.

On the tagging front, I was particularly interested as this is a common form of marketing wares on Facebook, one I often interpret to be spam. Apparently, if you tag someone in a manner that they do not approve, it REALLY IS spam.

Reading the same policy, “You will not send or otherwise post unauthorized commercial communications (such as spam) on Facebook.” Facebook has demonstrated it is adamant about policing spammers on its network. It is actively prosecuting abusers of its spamming policy and suing them.

In essence, if you use tags with your content or posts to market your services, you are spamming people. No ifs or ands about it. If the people who are being tagged decide to report you, it’s likely that you will find little leniency from Facebook.

The lesson for content marketers, don’t hard sell on Facebook. Tagging should be soft, clearly benefiting the community members mentioned. Otherwise it’s best to try other social network services to achieve your goals.

info@clarkstonlegal.com

http://www.clarkstonlegal.com/