Legal

I saw this article on December 1st at CNet News. It talks about a recent ruling regarding a cyber bullying, suicide and MySpace.

The specifics of the Lori Drew case are messy and emotional. The important fact is that there is no federal cyber bullying statute, so the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles turned to a novel interpretation of existing computer hacking laws to try to punish the woman. The general idea is that in creating terms of service, a Web site owner specifies the rules of admission to the site. If someone violates any of those contractual terms, the "access" to the Web site is done without authorization, and is thus hacking.

A jury found Lori guilty of 3 misdemeanor violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This means she could get up to $300,000 in fines and a year in prison.

At the moment, (unless it gets overturned) using this case as a example, a websites Terms of Service currently have the power of US federal hacking laws. As the article points out most companies have strict Terms of Service. Google is used as an example. Their terms do not allow people under the age of 18 to use any of Google's services. Which 17 year old and under teen exactly follows this term? You would be hard press to find one. Most dating sites have strict policies as well. You are not suppose to join Match.com if you are married and eHarmony forbids members from lying in their profiles. Breaking these rules in theory classifies you as a computer hacker which mean you could potentially be charged.

Read MySpace ruling could lead to jail for lying online daters for the full story.

A press release from Chemistry about the eHarmony New Jersey settlement, points out the fact that the dating matchmaking service Chemistry has always had an open mind and accepted singles looking for same sex partners. Thomas Enraght-Moony, CEO of Match.com and Chemistry.com is quoted as saying:

It's a shame that Dr. Neil Clark Warren's sudden acceptance came at the forced hand of the legal system.

With this release Chemistry is just taking advantage of eHarmony's reluctance with offering same sex matching. This issue has generated a lot of publicity in which Chemistry wants to be a part of. This is a marketing trend in which Chemistry started when they launched several TV commercials in the last year pointing out eHarmony only matches heterosexual singles.

The press release also points out, eHarmony has flip-flopped on the reasons why they don't offer gay matching. Reasons listed include that same-sex marriage is illegal in most states and eHarmony matching system is based only on information about heterosexual couples.

The Chemistry release mentions as well, gay users will still have to leave eHarmony and go to another site. I do have to wonder why eHarmony is starting a whole new site. Why not just make it a part of the main eHarmony dating site? Members of eHarmony cannot perform searches for singles and only receive matches from eHarmony themselves. So, members who want same-sex matches and members who want heterosexual matches would never mingle (if that is what they are worried about).

A judge in California has ordered eHarmony and the plaintiffs of a class action discrimination case into mediation. The two legal teams will now have to try and reach a settlement outside of court. Recently eHarmony settled a class action case in New Jersey (see Story) which resulted in some money to be paid out and a new same-sex matching site to be open called Compatible Partners. With the New Jersey settlement eHarmony has stated it makes the California case moot. The California plaintiffs say it doesn't go far enough. We will just have to wait and see what happens. The case is scheduled to go to trial October 2009, if no settlement agreement is reached. The lawyers for both sides plan to meet on December 3rd to decide on a mediator and the time required to reach an agreement.

For the full article visit PCMag.com.

Late yesterday a press release went out by eHarmony which informed us they had settled a 3 year old allegation with the New Jersey Attorney General. The settlement was about eHarmony violating the New Jersey's Law Against Discrimination and not allowing a gay / same-sex matching service. Among $50,000 settlement money awarded to the NJ Attorney General Office and $5,000 to the original plaintiff (Eric McKinley) eHarmony has agreed to launch a same sex matching service by March 31, 2009. The new dating site is called Compatible Partners. In eHarmony's FAQ about the settlement they mention that the site will be free to the first 10,000 members who register within one year of the dating sites launch. Compatible Partners and eHarmony will be separate sites, with separate matching pools. If you seek same gender matching at eHarmony you will be directed to Compatible Partners.

The FAQ also points out:

The Compatible Partners site will have a statement posted to inform members that its Compatibility Matching System™ is solely based on research involving married heterosexual couples.

Previously eHarmony has stressed that their matching system was designed to match heterosexual couples and it would not work well with same sex matching. Is this really a win for gay activists then? One other interesting point from the FAQ is, because of the settlement eHarmony has not been found in violation of the law. Basically then eHarmony is being forced to create a gay dating site, not because it's the right thing to do but, because they do not want any more negative publicity. In the end eHarmony really wins. All this publicity surrounding eHarmony and same sex matching will more than pay for the settlement.

On a side note, the State of New Jersey seems to have something against online dating sites. Early this year they brought in the controversial Internet Dating Safety Act.

For more information about this matching service, read our eHarmony review.

According to several news sources (ABC15.com and AZ Central) the Arizona Attorney General has filed a lawsuit against Great Expectations dating service, alleging they misled their customers.

Great Expectations has said the case has no merit. This service has over 30 years of experience in matchmaking and is one of the few dating services which actually meet their clients face to face at one of their offices. They have more than a couple dozen offices spread across the US.

The suit was filed in Maricopa County Superior Court against Sun West Video, Inc which runs Great Expectations for Singles.

The suit is seeking refunds for consumers and financial penalties against the company.

The Attorney General's office alleged that Great Expectations:

• Misrepresented to consumers the overall number of participating members and members in certain age groups.
• Told consumers that two to three marriages occurred among members every month when it had no credible basis for such statements.
• Misrepresented to consumers that it had conducted a criminal background check on all of its members.
• Used high-pressure sales tactics that included sales representatives urging consumers to contact their credit card companies to get an increased credit limit to pay for a membership.
• Showed potential new members written profiles and photographs of people they said were Great.

These allegations have not been proven in court yet but, we have decided to remove this dating site review from our categories for the time being, just to be safe.

The Communications Decency Act (CDA) regulates indecency and obscenity on the Internet in the United States. It also declares that operators of Internet services were not to be considered as publishers unless they actually created the material. This makes them not legally liable for the words of third parties who use their web sites. This includes everything from forum posts and comments too submitted articles.

The Friendfinder Network recently got into legal trouble when someone complained that someone else had created a fake profile on the dating site that “reasonably identified” her. Friendfinder did remove the profile from the dating site but the profile information and photo was still being used in advertising. The reason the Communications Decency Act was not applied in this case is:

... the right to control the commercial use of one’s identity is it considered a general intellectual property right. The judge reasoned that Friendfinder wasn’t entitled to the CDA’s usual brand of immunity due to the intellectual property provision that states the CDA does not preempt intellectual property laws.

In section 5 of Friendfinders Terms of Use Agreement it states:

By posting content to any public area of FriendFinder, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to FriendFinder Network, Inc. and its members, an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, fully-paid, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, and distribute such information, rights of publicity, and content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works and other media, such information and content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.] This basically gives Friendfinder ownership over almost anything posted on their site. This may raise alarm bells when you read it but, it is common practice among dating services, social networks and other web services in which you post information.

While I am far from being a lawyer it appears to me that FriendFinder got into trouble because the information posted in the profile by the other person did not belong to them to post in the first place. Since the information posted in the profile was about some other actual person they had no right to post it, therefore they did not have the right to give up the general intellectual property right of the material to Friendfinder.

It is a sticky situation. Overall the person who actually posted the material is responsible, but Friendfinder did continue to use the information in advertising even after they were made aware of the problem with the information from that particular profile. I'm not sure how old this case actually is but, when you see profile information in FriendFinder Ads now (at least from the ads I see) they have a note at the bottom explaining "Photos and other data are for illustrative purpose only". I guess for the most part they have stopped the practice of using actual profiles in their advertising.

For the full story plus another example legal case, read the post at Public Knowledge and for more information on the CDA visit Wikipedia.