Facebook Beacon Broke The Law, Lawsuits incoming?

By now I can just point to a search page of Homotron to refer you to our previous coverage of Beacongate, the controversy surrounding Facebook's incredibly stupid recent attempt to monetise its users through less than savoury means.

Well, it seems the situations may get worse for Facebook before it gets better. Facebook may have actually broken the law by displaying information about recent videos you rented on one its partner sites: Blockbuster.

In 1988, during Robert Bork's Supreme Court nomination hearings, his video rental history was leaked out to press and became a point of contention. Congress quickly passed the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988 making it illegal to publicly reveal your video buying or rental history (Congress moves quickly under the threat that their particular choice of private home video might be revealed to their constituents *ahem*).

The fact of the matter is Blockbuster shares rental and buying history with Facebook, and prior to the opt-out being added to Facebook Beacon, all of this was involuntary, which is in direct violation to the VPPA:

I dug a bit into the legalities of the issue, and this is roughly what I came up with: Facebook and Blockbuster should hunker down and prepare for the lawsuits. Their recent move to allowing a global opt-out may cut them off from accruing further liability, but there’s probably an overhang of damages facing them from their past mistakes. I should note that this isn’t my usual area of law, so salt the analysis appropriately. Caselaw on the VPPA is thin, but there might be other rules of information privacy law out there that would significantly change the bottom line.

At $2,500 per violation prescribed in the VPPA, plus lawyer's fees and punitive damages, Blockbuster and Facebook may be facing a hefty bill.

Facebook and the VPPA: Uh-Oh [The Laboratorium]
[via: Wired]