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Is Facebook Breaking German Law?

Started by Nick O'Neill · 10 months ago

Many have questioned Facebook’s decision to place users’ faces on ads within the social network. Just last week, their decision to do so resulted in a lawsuit for Blockbuster. Facebook has just taken their policy one step further by leveraging users to promote their own s ... Continue reading »

3 comments

  • The Germans are very concerned about security and privacy, and I think that this will scare a lot of Germans, and make them stay away from Facebook.

    There is even a Facebook group for this:

    http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7846164963

    NO FACEBOOK ADS using MY NAME!
  • On my site www.rechtzweinull.de, where I regularly write about the relevant internet law in Germany and Europe, you find a short legal analysis of facebooks recent promotion strategy.

    As it is only in German, I would like to repeat the conclusions here in English.

    As German privay law can not be waived be the facebook terms, it ist still applicable.

    Publishing the members names to promote the own plattform without the express consent of each member is - of course - also illegal in Germany. The privacy statement is not sufficient to justify this strategy.

    It seems, that facebook already has stopped this practice.

    However I ask myself, how facebook could start such a campaing, obviously without consulting a competent lawyer.
  • I'm confused by peoples response. Are people saying that if your Facebook page gets indexed by google and appears in natural listings then that's OK, but if they appear in the paid listings it's not??? What's the difference. Haven't people made their information public already by putting it on Facebook?

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