Privacy on Arsebook
Is an oxymoron.
Skint campaigners fighting against proposed changes to Facebook's privacy policy are threatening to force the Irish Data Commissioner's office to defend its decisions in court. Austrian student group europe-v-facebook has accused the Irish DPC of being "fooled" by Mark Zuckerberg's free-content ad network, which boasts 1 …
I'm surprised that on the new account login page the words:
'We Facebook own everything you ever put on here, everything about you that is put on here by your mates and anything else that might relate to you in the future. We can do what we want to your account, delete it, allow you to be bullied, vilified and be wrongly accused of being a paedophile. We don't care and don't expect us to remove any content that might harm or embarrass you. Your arse, as they say will belong to us.'
If you are happy to agree to these terms and conditions please click on the 'I agree to become a Facebook Slave' icon.
Really?
This sounds like the sort of case an advocacy group could get done pro-bono. (http://www.pila.ie/ for a referral service, courtesy of the Free Legal Aid Council) Even if not, Irish solicitors are desperate for work, Barristers' fees are capped, and they're also pretty short of jobs at the moment too. €300,000 on an appeal to a DPC ruling sounds excessive, (I'm no lawyer, but I live here, and I hear how much other cases have cost here by listening to the news)
However, I think the key words here are "student group". I suspect these guys haven't bothered to look up the actual costs of bringing an action in Ireland, or the most efficient way to do so, so they've decided that the only viable option is to decamp to Dublin for a few months while they push a pointless action all the way up to the Supreme Court, where it'll be thrown out, and they can go home with just enough martyrdom to ensure an interesting CV when they go on to a good law firm.
If they cared about the issue more than their own self-aggrandizement, they'd consider co-operating with a local advocacy group to achieve the same ends, but that doesn't make you look like a hero, I guess.