Georgetown Law Alumni Magazine - Res Ipsa Loquitur
Fall/Winter 2009 - Online Volume 2
Lectures and Events
From Casebook to Facebook
Last winter, when the social networking site Facebook caused an uproar by changing its terms-of-use agreement in such a way that users believed their information would be perpetually owned by the company, Adjunct Professor Marc Rotenberg saw an opportunity. He invited Facebook’s privacy counsel, Chris Kelly, to participate in a classroom discussion February 21 with students and with Anne Kathrine Petteroe, the head of a group of Facebook users that was protesting the changes from Norway.
“It was a great class and showed the Law Center’s ability to explore a balanced debate on cutting-edge legal issues with key decision makers,” Rotenberg said. He noted that the class also demonstrated the value of the school’s investment in technology, since the classroom facilities allowed students to have a back-and-forth over Skype — computer software that allows users to make phone calls over the Internet — with Petteroe and Kelly. “The class loved it.” Rotenberg said.
Facebook was proposing several changes, Rotenberg explained, “but the most important from the users’ perspective concerned control over user-generated content, the posts and the photos that people were putting online. Users did not want Facebook to be able to use their stuff for other purposes.”
The Electronic Privacy Information Center — the Washington, D.C., public interest research center headed by Rotenberg — was all set to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission when Rotenberg got the idea to try the classroom first. As it happens, his course in Information Privacy Law was examining precisely those issues: an individual’s right to control his or her personal information held by others.
And according to Rotenberg, when the issue of proposed changes to Facebook’s terms of service was put to the students, they said, “Let users vote.” In the end, Facebook announced that it was not only returning to the previous terms-of-use agreement but would be soliciting public input in determining future policies — a result that did not go unnoticed by USA Today.
“Did some of the policy changes outlined by Facebook … today emerge from the classroom?” the newspaper queried on February 26 — answering its own question with a brief article on Rotenberg’s experiment.
Katherine Andrus (L’11), a student in the class, said that when the controversy occurred she had just joined Facebook — owing to the fact that she has a teenage daughter who uses the site. And unlike many users, she actually read the privacy policy beforehand, concerned not so much with her daughter’s control over the material but with others’ access to it. Andrus said that she and her classmates “had the opportunity to take theories we were discussing and apply them to a situation we were all familiar with,” and noted that Facebook’s privacy counsel was “absolutely responsive” to what students were saying.
“The classroom gave us a good opportunity to explore the significance of the proposed change in the terms of service from all perspectives,” Rotenberg said. “This time we avoided the complaint process through a good classroom discussion and a sensible response by Facebook.”
