A California appellate court ruled that a person does not have a right to privacy for any material they post on their social networking page. This exact case should also act as a cautionary tale to all parents and their children to understand the possible ramification of a seemingly innocent post on their Facebook.com, Myspace.com, or other social networking pages.
Here are the facts: Following a visit to her hometown of Coalinga, California, Cynthia Moreno, wrote An ode to Coalinga (“The Ode”) and posted it in her online journal on MySpace.com. The Ode opens “the older I get, the more I realize how much I despise Coalinga” and then proceeds to make a number of extremely negative comments about Coalinga and its inhabitants.
Cynthia’s parents, David and Maria Moreno, and Cynthia’s sister, Araceli Moreno, (collectively “The Family”) were living in Coalinga.
Roger Campbell, was the principal of Coalinga High School.
Mr. Campbell read The Ode on Cynthia’s MySpace.com page and submitted the Ode to the local newspaper, the Coalinga Record, which published it as a letter to the editor, and signed it with Cynthia’s first and last name.
“””The community reacted violently to the publication of the Ode. The Family received death threats and a shot was fired at the family home, forcing the family to move out of Coalinga. Due to severe losses, David closed the 20-year-old family business.”””
The family filed suit for invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress against the person who gave the ode to the newspaper, the school district which he worked for and the newspaper which published it.
The appellate court found that since The Ode was published on Myspace.com the Ode was not private.
“”Once posted on myspace.com, this article was available to anyone with internet access.””
“””A crucial ingredient of the applicable invasion of privacy cause of action is a public disclosure of private facts. A matter that is already public or that has previously become part of the public domain is not private.””
“Cynthia by publicizing her opinions about Coalinga on her post on MySpace.com, made her article available to any person with a computer and thus opened it to the public eye.”
“Under these circumstances, no reasonable person would have had an expectation of privacy regarding the published material.”
“Cynthia’s last name was not a private fact. Although her online journal only used the name “Cynthia”; it is clear that her identity was readily ascertainable from her MySpace page” and the court noted that Cynthia’s MySpace page included her picture.
So bottom line, be careful, very careful of what you post on your Facebook.com, MySpace.com and Twitter pages.
Not only can the post be used against you, but appearently reprinted and used against you in a whole different forum than the author intended.
Have a long discussion with your children about the extremely harsh and long lasting consequences of before making a post on their social networking pages.
I always tell people, if you cannot handle spams or privacy issues on the internet, go live in the caves with Osama.
That why we called internet the WWW-wild wild west-no hold bars-anything and everything goes.
Spams is here to stay, sucks it up.
Bull
This case has nothing to so with Spam, whatsoever
Mr.MHB
Hiya spams or no spams, it is almost the same sh-it like privacy issues.
I hear so many people so damn afraid of going onto the internet because of spams, privacy or security issues and my answer to them is..go back to pen and papers.
Lets put it this way—short and sweet- people who upload their pictures/videos on the net are what we called attention w-hores—drama queens–and wanting to be discovered.
I myself never expected privacy on the Internet. Then again, I don’t recall the Internet ever having so-called promised that to begin with.
Even if certain laws address that, they’re only as good as their being enforced, and only in jurisdictions that agreed to them. You can imagine how messy that can get when two parties in two parts in the world start disputing over privacy issues, depending who has more control over that.
Not really surprised with this decision. And I’ll start talking to my kid/s about this when they’re a wee bit older…whenever that is. 🙂
The Courts have this wrong. Speaking from the prospect of a juror, my first impression of this was that she had directed it at a particular subscribed group of people, namely her friends confidentially speaking. This is no different than the wire tap laws that require a court order to view someone’s private conversation. When considering the site as to be a social network for the general public is at the moment on one side of the coin, the other side of the coin of social communication is that which is targeted towards the specific social group you intend to target, mainly her personal acquaintances. It’s group or (social) conversation. It’s called MYSPACE. It’s mine to control how ever I want without public scrutiny or for that matter, publication or criminal prosecution. If she wanted it publicly known she would have taken it to the news paper herself, she definatly had an expectation of privacy based on the substance of the article. They should take this to a higher court. I guarantee the major lawsuits concerning this issue in the future will be overwhelming, so get your law degree.
Diggens
I already have my law degree and I think the court was right on this.
There are long standing cases which found you can’t expect privacy where no privacy exisits.
Take you top off on the streets of New Orleans and flash, you have no right to complain when your picture shows up on the next girls gone wild tape.
Talk on your cell phone about illegal activity and the authorities can tape that call without a warrant and use it against you.
Why?
Because you have no right to expect privavy for something you do publically, or when you communicate using a medium which offers no privacy.
One day the law might change, but if you post personal info on the net do not expect to have any privacy rights to that material.