Inside Facebook

Wendy Davis had the story this week of a Dallas woman, Cathryn Harris, who is suing video rental service Blockbuster for violation of the Videotape Privacy Protection Act of 1988 by virtue of its participation in Facebook’s Beacon program.

Beacon, as most will remember, came under PR fire a few months ago for not requiring “opt-in” approval from users before automatically sharing activity at Beacon partner sites with Facebook friends. (Facebook has since updated Beacon to require opt-in approval before publishing Beacon stories.)

In response to the suit, Blockbuster’s Randy Hargrove defended the Facebook partnership and said the Beacon program included sufficient levels of privacy protection for Blockbuster customers.

“Our alliance with Facebook included numerous levels of privacy protection built in for our online subscribers,” he said. “While we cannot discuss the specifics of this lawsuit, we intend to vigorously defend the company in this litigation.”

While this case may seem frivolous to those more comfortable sharing personal information with friends online, Facebook’s user base has grown sufficiently beyond its initial US college demographic that it must now take very seriously the perspectives and possible misconceptions of those less comfortable living in a culture of transparency that characterizes Facebook and several other social networking services. While most Facebook users are more accustomed to privacy norms that are accepting of increased information flow between friends, either Cathryn Harris or her lawyer aren’t.