Lawsuit Seeks 2 Million in Compensation for Customers
Recently, a lawsuit known as Doe v. Netflix was filed in a California federal court. The suit alleges the company violated fair-trade and federal privacy laws by disclosing information that was not sufficiently anonymized, as part of a contest.
The contest was designed to help the popular online DVD rental service improve their recommendation algorithm. They gave away to over 50,000 contestants massive datasets that included movie ratings along with number identifiers for the subscribers.
The privacy problem arose when only weeks after the contest's launch, two researchers managed to link the "anonymous" Netflix reviews with those posted on another (non-anonymous) website ? thus revealing information such as political leanings and sexual orientation.
The complaint points out that movie rentals can be highly personal, the sort of information that one might not want published to the world ? for example, the viewing of "Brokeback Mountain" or even "The Passion of the Christ." It is for this very reason that the Video Privacy Protection Act exists. The impetus for the law was the release of Robert Bork's video rental history during his Supreme Court nomination.
But did Netflix really "knowingly disclose" the personally identifying information of its customers, as required for a violation of the VPPA? The definition given by the Act of "personally identifying information" is "information which identifies a person as having requested or obtained specific video materials."
This has been filed as a class action suit, seeking no less than $2,500 for each member; Netflix currently has over 2 million customers. This could prove to be an extremely costly lawsuit for what many consider to be a simple mistake. Legally, did Netflix make a good faith effort to preserve their customers' privacy? And from a public relations standpoint, can their customers forgive them if that effort wasn't good enough?
Source: Legalmatchmaker.com
The contest was designed to help the popular online DVD rental service improve their recommendation algorithm. They gave away to over 50,000 contestants massive datasets that included movie ratings along with number identifiers for the subscribers.
The privacy problem arose when only weeks after the contest's launch, two researchers managed to link the "anonymous" Netflix reviews with those posted on another (non-anonymous) website ? thus revealing information such as political leanings and sexual orientation.
The complaint points out that movie rentals can be highly personal, the sort of information that one might not want published to the world ? for example, the viewing of "Brokeback Mountain" or even "The Passion of the Christ." It is for this very reason that the Video Privacy Protection Act exists. The impetus for the law was the release of Robert Bork's video rental history during his Supreme Court nomination.
But did Netflix really "knowingly disclose" the personally identifying information of its customers, as required for a violation of the VPPA? The definition given by the Act of "personally identifying information" is "information which identifies a person as having requested or obtained specific video materials."
This has been filed as a class action suit, seeking no less than $2,500 for each member; Netflix currently has over 2 million customers. This could prove to be an extremely costly lawsuit for what many consider to be a simple mistake. Legally, did Netflix make a good faith effort to preserve their customers' privacy? And from a public relations standpoint, can their customers forgive them if that effort wasn't good enough?
Source: Legalmatchmaker.com
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