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Reposting Personal Information Online and the Legality Thereof
BoomShake
The EngineerColumbia, MDRegistered User regular
The EngineerColumbia, MDRegistered User regular
I've got a question regarding legality of posting, reposting, connecting the dots, etc. of someone's personal, yet publicly available, information online. Here's the situation:
Member A on social media site tells Member B to watch a documentary, indicating that A was a producer for it as well. B looks the documentary up on IMDB and figures out which of the few producers is A from inspection (uses the same avatar on the social media site and on IMDB, name on social media site is the production company A belongs to minus spaces between words, etc.). B then responds to A on the social media site thread and uses A's real name obtained from IMDB.
Now, after this A flipped the fuck out and is threatening legal action, says he/she talked to a lawyer who says there's a case there, et cetera. My gut says it's all hot air as it was obtained from public sources, but I couldn't find much from from my Googling. I was hoping some of you fine folks could provide insight and any cases or laws that are relevant.
Member A on social media site tells Member B to watch a documentary, indicating that A was a producer for it as well. B looks the documentary up on IMDB and figures out which of the few producers is A from inspection (uses the same avatar on the social media site and on IMDB, name on social media site is the production company A belongs to minus spaces between words, etc.). B then responds to A on the social media site thread and uses A's real name obtained from IMDB.
Now, after this A flipped the fuck out and is threatening legal action, says he/she talked to a lawyer who says there's a case there, et cetera. My gut says it's all hot air as it was obtained from public sources, but I couldn't find much from from my Googling. I was hoping some of you fine folks could provide insight and any cases or laws that are relevant.
BoomShake on
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Second, if "B" is you, just say it. "A"s and "B"s are annoying. But anyway....
A name is public information so unless it's privileged (witness protection?) not seeing what the issue is. "A" is stupid for putting that much in for out there if they wanted to remain anonymous. "B" was jerky for publishing it, but agian, it's public info.
So, again, not a lawyer, but can't see how there's any legal case. Might be a breech of the board's ToS, as it would be here on PA, BTW.
Neither party are actually me, so I just went with A and B for ease.
And that's basically what I thought. Not illegal, just kinda dickish. I wasn't able to find any clauses in the site's ToS prohibiting things like that.
Anyone with some legal background want to confirm this?
You post information on the internets, it's no longer private.
I can't even imagine what dude is going to try and use as grounds for his lawsuit... "Your honor, I'm a dumbass and someone else found out! I wants monees!"
Putting it that way, that's about 98% of lawsuits in America.... Also the sole reason for America's Funniest Videos.
Can the person be sued? Technically, you can be sued for anything. Would anything come of it? I can't imagine it would. Odds are, though, that this person is just threatening a lawsuit and has absolutely nothing to back it up. Personally, I would ignore them until I actually got a summons.
Also information openly posted on the internet (a la IMDB) has no presumption of privacy, ergo no basis for a suit. Its like a guy in the middle of the street walking around naked and then tries to sue everyone that looks at him for peeping - no presumption of privacy.
edit: Not a lawyer, but have studied law
No, just exaggerating for effect. Don't think I've ever been to Fark.
But like you said, they can sue, but unlikely anything would come of it.
For it to be a criminal case, there would have to be a law that criminalizes posting personal information. In general, people do have a right to privacy. Do people have a right to anonymity? I mean, this could raise questions about due process, who was wronged, what was lost or gained, etc. But it's highly unlikely that there's a criminal case in this matter. Person B would probably never be convicted in a criminal case anyway.
So most likely it would be a civil case. But Person A has to show how this has damaged them in some way.
I'm not a lawyer, though, and this is pretty vague as-is. Person B could easily argue that by Person A stating that they were a producer, a reasonably intelligent person could figure out who they are, regardless of what Person B said. Especially because Person A prompted the interaction in the first place.