• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, November 4, 2016

Twitter is asking a federal judge to dismiss a privacy lawsuit centered on "Famous: The Celebrity Twitter," a defunct gaming app.

"Famous" was a successor to the controversial "Stolen" -- an app that let people use virtual currency to "buy" or "sell" other people's Twitter profiles in a way the developer reportedly compared to collecting baseball cards.

Stolen surged in popularity after it was launched in January, but the app only lasted a brief time before it was shut down over bullying concerns. Several weeks later, the same developer, Hey, launched Famous. The new app was similar to Stolen, but instead of letting people "buy" Twitter profiles, it let users "invest" in the profiles by purchasing "hearts."

In August, Alabama resident Jason Parker sued Twitter and Hey for allegedly violating a 2015 Alabama law giving people the right to control the commercial use of their identities.

Parker alleged in a class-action complaint that the developer misappropriated users' full names and photos without their consent. He also alleged that Twitter wrongly made information about its users available to the developer through an application programming interface.

This week, Twitter filed papers urging U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup in San Francisco to dismiss Parker's complaint. Twitter argues that it isn't responsible for other companies' use of the application programming interface. The company points to the Communications Decency Act -- which broadly immunizes Web platforms for unlawful activity by outside users. Web companies including Craigslist, MySpace, Google and Facebook have drawn on that law to defeat lawsuits by people who sought to hold the companies responsible for users' activity.

Twitter also argues that the Alabama law violates free speech principles.

Famous's "use of publicly available names and images from Twitter to allow its users to express themselves ... and to comment on profiles does not justify overriding the First Amendment," Twitter argues. "This is especially true where, as here, plaintiff voluntarily signed up for Twitter and placed his name and photograph into the public domain."

Alsup could make a decision about the matter as early as next month.