David Cohen writes:
An amended class-action lawsuit filed against Facebook over its use of members’ names and pictures to promote its friend finder feature suffered the same fate as its pre-amendment predecessor: dismissed by a federal judge in California.
The amended filing of Robyn Cohen, et al. versus Facebook was dismissed Thursday. The original case (see below) was thrown out June 28.
Read more on All Facebook.
Okay, I grant you that the plaintiffs may not have suffered economic harm, but isn’t there something about having the right to control the use of your own image by a commercial entity? If Facebook uses someone’s image as part of its commercial operations, unless people have consented to the use of their image to promote Facebook, I’m a bit puzzled by this ruling.
Update: Thankfully, Venkat Balasubramani has now blogged about the decision. He explains much of what was confusing me, so head on over to his blog post for a helpful discussion of the case.