Commentary
Users In Facebook Suit Claim Their Data Has A Price
- by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, March 2, 2011
That's an argument that some other courts have endorsed. For instance, U.S. District Court Judge Otis Wright II in the Central District of California recently threw out a consumer's lawsuit against online data broker Spokeo on the theory that the Web user didn't allege economic injury. (The user in that case recently tried again with an amended complaint alleging that he hasn't been able to find work as a result of inaccurate information on Spokeo.)
Legal experts say that plaintiffs in privacy cases generally face hurdles because they can't point to concrete harms that resulted from the alleged data breach.
Still, the consumers who are suing Facebook aren't ready to throw in the towel just yet. "For every wrong there is a remedy," they assert in legal papers filed last week.
They go on to say that they have suffered economic harm on the theory that their personal information "has a market-definable actual value, just like baseball cards or used cars."
What's more, they argue, if anyone profits from "the distribution of their personal data" it should be them, and not Facebook. "Plaintiffs have lost the right to provide that data to entities in exchange for goods and services, because these entities have received the information from Facebook, thus depriving plaintiffs of the chance to sell it to these entities."
While that may be so, the argument seems like a stretch, considering that few if any Facebook users likely attempt to sell their names to ad networks. Still, there's no telling what will happen in court. A judge might well decide that the users' argument is strong enough to keep the case alive long enough for both sides to gather more evidence -- in which case the fallout from Facebook's continuing privacy problems won't go away any time soon.
Wendy Davis is a Senior Writer at MediaPost. You can reach Wendy at wdavis@mediapost.com
It would be pointless for a single individual to try and sell their personal information to an ad network. The ad network wouldn’t even return the call. Yet, an ad network could offer a program that reimburses consumers individually for their information…. Sound familiar? Marketing programs based on points or air miles do just that as does Publisher’s Clearing House when they trade chances to win prizes for your information. If all your information is already available to them these programs lose their value and the consumer looses the economic benefit of the program if it goes away. It’s clear that Facebook is benefiting in a fundamentally inequitable way. The courts should recognize that.