14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook has been recently faced with a new lawsuit related to the Beacon matter, even though representatives of both parties have announced that an agreement is being negotiated. It appears that three persons from Texas currently have a pending lawsuit against another company (namely Blockbuster) that also participated in the Beacon program and they have chosen to sue Facebook as well. In addition, it seems that this Texan group has already “won a significant ruling against Blockbuster stemming from its participation in Beacon” as reported by MediaPost.
More specifically, the plaintiffs state that the Beacon program comes in violation of the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act because it shared data related to their movie rentals as well as purchases to third parties, without previously requesting their written consent. Consequently, the penalty is $2,500 per incident.
When asked to comment on the new lawsuit, the only remark belonged to a spokesperson who stated, “This suit is without merit and we will fight it vigorously.”
Up until now, it has not been revealed whether this new legal case will affect the proposed agreement in a distinct class-action lawsuit in California against the popular social network. This settlement states that Facebook is to shut down Beacon and pay $9.5 million to a settlement fund, and that two thirds of this amount will be invested for setting up a new privacy research foundation. Furthermore, individual plaintiffs are to receive sums ranging from $15,000 to $1,000.
To paint the picture more clearly, the Beacon program informed members about their contacts' activities connected to various websites, such as Overstock, Blockbuster or Zappos. At the beginning, this service was enabled by default, unless users chose to opt out. However, after merely a few weeks after its launch, the program was modified and became opt-in only, and the changes continued until the service could be permanently opted out.