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back to article Sponsored Stories ruck: Zuck chucks 15 bucks at ad photo suck schmucks

Facebook will dish out $15 to lucky users in a court-approved $20m settlement over "sponsored stories" - the little ads that surprised netizens by using their names and photos. US District Judge Richard Seeborg gave the final green light to the offer to end a lawsuit against the online flyers, which automatically hoovered up …

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  1. Shades

    The Cost of "Business"?

    Facebook will dish out $15 to lucky users in a court-approved $20m settlement over "sponsored stories" - the little ads that surprised netizens by using their names and photos. [...] The social network, which bagged $234m from sponsored stories between January 2011 and August 2012, said in a statement it was "pleased" with the ruling.

    $234m - $20m = This (or this)

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    1. JDX Gold badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: The Cost of "Business"?

      Why on earth should they give away everything this brought in? If they only earned $5m from stories, they shouldn't still be fined $20m?

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      1. Demosthenese
        Reply Icon

        Re: The Cost of "Business"?

        If what they are doing is wrong then they should be punished ... so the fine should be bigger than the profit, regardless of the size of the profit. Otherwise crime pays.

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    2. teebie
      Reply Icon

      Re: The Cost of "Business"?

      When you are rich enough ignoring the law can be very profitable

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  2. JDX Gold badge

    Why only those who complained?

    With something like FB, you can actually tell exactly who was affected because FB owns all the data... they can very easily see every user used in a sponsored ad.

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  3. silent_count
    Unhappy

    The wages of sin

    The plaintiffs should have used the "RIAA v..." cases as a precedent. I believe the going rate is $20k - $400k per unauthorised upload. As the defendant's infringing behaviour was clearly for commercial purposes, the plaintiffs would have ended taking the Bat-, or in this case, Zuck-cave.

    That's the only way these companies are ever going to take average people's privacy seriously - if they're made to pay so much money that they simply don't want to go on living. When the top exec is sitting on their yacht and thinks, "Gee whiz. I'd better not mess with the users' privacy. Remember good 'ol Zuckerman. Had a big company and a nice house... and now he's living on food stamps."

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    Court approved lucky users?

    I would have thought that being prevented from going forward with a trial and Facebook continuing to have control over their children's images would mean that the original plaintiff lost the case. Which was about protecting their kids privacy. I guess making money is more important than kids privacy.

    "Facebook has agreed both to provide greater disclosure and transparency as to when and how member’s names and profile pictures are re-published, and to give them additional control over those events"

    --

    Injunctive relief: injunctive relief consists of a court order called an injunction, requiring an individual to do or not do a specific action ..

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