Mike Arrington vs. Facebook Lawsuit - Becoming an Expert Witness

In light of Mike Arrington’s and TechCrunch’s lawsuit against Facebook for $25 million based on Facebook’s use of Mike’s image in social ads someone needs to shed the light on the real issues of privacy on the Internet.

Given my history of working on privacy issues, and the fact that Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly is a friend I am going to be appearing as an expert witness supporting Facebook on this issue.

There are many real privacy issues on the Internet and this isn’t one of them. By attempting to derail Facebook in their quest to take over the world, slow down their recruitment of top Google staff and distract them from focusing on providing more real privacy controls for the Internet Mike has opened himself up to a counter suit, damages and exposes TechCrunch to serious liability.

The issues of privacy are not to be laughed at. I think this video on the challenges of maintaining privacy in today’s world showcases the true dangers that Mike’s lawsuit distracts Facebook and other Internet leaders from dealing with.

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On Mon 31 Mar 2008.

8 Responses to “ Mike Arrington vs. Facebook Lawsuit - Becoming an Expert Witness ”

Comments:

Will Spaetzel says:
April 1st, 2008 at 3:55 am

The issues of privacy and the use of one’s image to promote something that you have not agreed to are certainly important ones.

However, its hard to say if Mike Arrington is actually suing Facebook. The post did strike me as odd and then, thinking about it a little longer I realized that it was almost April 1. I believe that Mike simply couldn’t wait until April Fool’s to play a joke on us.

Jean-Pierre Martineau says:
April 1st, 2008 at 4:07 am

I don’t know much about this case, but one issue that has been bugging me lately is end-user license agreements and website terms and conditions. The last time I checked, Facebook’s was 48 pages long when printed. They have one of the worst agreements I have ever seen.

Policies such as Facebook’s are abusive. I think that anyone trying to convince a jury, or even a judge (although that may be harder) that that clicking a “I agree” button that goes along with a 50 page ToU agreement gives the right to do just about anything will have a hard time doing so.

The fact is that even if you sign a contract, (I have no idea what jurisprudence exist in the matter of the validity of a click as a binding action in the jurisdiction in question) you still retain basic rights, and are still protected by laws that cannot be overwritten by any contract. I have no idea if such laws apply in this case, but I suspect a good lawyer to be able to dig something up.

I used to think that privacy was an important issue. I still think it is: I don’t want my private life exposed, exploited or monetized in any way. The thing is that the biggest threat to privacy does not come from “evil corporations” or secret government agencies; the biggest threat to one’s privacy is blindly clicking the “agree” on every website they visit.

Every day, the internet’s citizens have to face the dilemma between relinquishing their rights and privacy or to not be served at all.

Such a conduct is unacceptable and is, sadly, the norm.

What would happen if you walked into a coffee shop and as you ordered your hot beverage, the cashier would give you a 30 page contract and a pen?

- “Hi, welcome to Starbucks, how may I help you?”
- “I’ll have a double shot of espresso please.”
- “Coming right up, sign here please”.
- “I beg your pardon?”
- “Sign here please, in order to get your beverage, you must agree to the contract.”
- “What’s in there?”
- “Not much, basically, the contract says that if you sit down and write up something in your journal while you’re drinking your coffee, we will own the copyright to what you’re writing”.
- “…”
- “Oh and we can use your persona in our ad campaigns”.
- “…”
- “It also says that if you leave DNA samples on your coffee mug or cup, or any other utensil such as a, but not limited to, a spoon, we can have them processed and sell them to your health insurance provider”.
- “…”

Customer walks away.

I dream of an internet where license/usage agreements are standardized - à la creative commons - where you grant specific rights, as opposed to waiving them, as needed, to gain access to specific functionalities. I dream of an internet where corporations ask permission to use the information you provide as needed by the nature of the services they offer in exchange. I dream of a simple explanation with checkboxes, and a valid justification that goes along with it. Not an unending stream of legalese that would put any lawyer to sleep and that you need read, and re-read two weeks later because they changed a paragraph. Guess which paragraph they changed. Oh well, fuck that, I’ll just hit the “agree” button. The internet desperately needs such a standardization and an infrastructure to back it up.

I resent the person that, by his actions, lead to the existence of license agreements… scratch that… lawyers. It probably all started with some caveman that stole a piece of dead rodent from his neighbor’s cave. Another caveman, witnessing the scene, took sides with the victim. Another took sides with the guy who stole the meat. The town’s elder caveman, pissed off because he got woken up from his afternoon nap to solve the dispute, decided to have the guy who stole the meat thrown off a cliff. To avoid being woken up in the midst of his future naps, the elder caveman carved onto a slab of slate what would eventually become, after many generations of elder cavemen reiterate it, the world’s first license agreement. It said: “Wake me up and I’ll have you thrown off a cliff. If you don’t agree with this, go die in the tundra”.

George Favvas says:
April 1st, 2008 at 12:58 pm

With Google now able to search into the future, privacy is no longer the issue it once was, since we can anticipate imminent violations just in time to put the guilty party on a one-way Virgle flight to Mars.

(What’s the deal with the video?)

austin says:
April 1st, 2008 at 2:40 pm

Some ad agency pitched wanted to show what they could do for Zero-Knowledge back in the hayday and they did this video as part of their pitch.

We never did anything with it, because it was just a concept they pitched us on - which had some obvious problems

Josh says:
April 1st, 2008 at 7:31 pm

Guru Meditation, eh? Somebody is an Amiga fan at TechCrunch. Sounds like a pre-emptive April Fool’s prank to me.

austin says:
April 8th, 2008 at 3:15 pm

Oh yeah. Both the Techcrunch and my response were just having some lighthearted fun on April 1st.

Next year, I’ll have to do something more creative on my own

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