Facebook recently rolled out a new advertising program called Social Ads, where Facebook users’ images, names, and words are used to help advertise products and services. I blogged about Facebook’s Social Ads here and here, contending that they are likely a violation of the tort of appropriation of name or likeness as well as the right to publicity tort.
Peter Lattman at the WSJ Blog has a great new post about Facebook that throws in another even more troubling wrinkle:
A few days ago, I posted about Facebook’s new Social Ads and I argued that they might give rise to an action under the appropriation of name or likeness tort. The most common formulation of the appropriation tort is defined in the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 652C: “One who appropriates to his own use or benefit the name or likeness of another is subject to liability to the other for invasion of his privacy.”
A related tort, a spin-off of appropriation, is the “right of publicity” which as defined by the Restatement (Third) of the Law of Unfair Competition § 46: “One who appropriates the commercial value of a person’s identity by using without consent the person’s name, likeness, or other indicia of identity for purpose of trade is subject to liability for [monetary and injunctive] relief.”
For the past several months, Congress has been wrangling over how to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to allow for the NSA warrantless surveillance program. The fact that the NSA surveillance program was clearly illegal — even under charitable creative dubiously-plausible fantastical interpretations of the law — seems to have quickly been forgotten. The focus now is on how to make it all legal. After all, if the President violates the law, it’s much easier to change the law than to do anything about it.
A few weeks ago, I offered free review copies of my book, The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet (Yale University Press, Oct. 2007) to bloggers who would agree to write a review of the book. A few reviews have now come in, and they are quite thoughtful and interesting. Many engage with the book at a more substantive level than the typical mainstream media reviews, and I’d like to discuss and respond to some of them.
Facebook recently announced a new advertising scheme. Instead of using celebrities to hawk products, it will use . . . you! That’s right, pictures of you and your friends will appear on Facebook ads to make products more enticing to Facebook customers.
As Facebook’s website describes its new “Social Ads” program:Continue Reading
I previously blogged about how the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit attempted to edit out information about a rather seedy interrogation technique from its opinion. Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Jonathan Adler writes about another case involving a similar redaction:
Professor Christopher Slobogin (University of Florida College of Law) has just published Privacy at Risk: The New Government Surveillance and the Fourth Amendment (U. Chicago Press, Nov. 1, 2007). According to the book description:
Today, I will be discussing and signing my book, The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet (Yale University Press, Oct. 2007) in Washington, DC.
Timothy Zick recently blogged about a lawsuit by a parent of a deceased soldier against a fundamentalist religious group that protested near the funeral. The religious group has been protesting near several funerals for soldiers, and their message is particularly offensive: The group claims that the soldiers died as punishment for a society that permits homosexuality.
Over at Schneier on Security, Bruce Schneier has a thoughtful post about the ills of overreactions in the name of national security: