sure, unless they have a somewhat sketchy cease & desist from the RIAA/MPAA...or if they simply don't want to piss off the feds (wikileaks anyone?). I'm sure they'll apologize later if they were wrong...as long as you can afford the lawyers to prove you were wrong...

gawker lost all credibility with me when they blamed easyDNS for pulling the plug on Wikileaks (actual culprit was everyDNS). Shit happens, it's an easily made typo. My problem is when they basically told the easyDNS owner that they would edit the original press release without acknolwedging that any edit had been made, let alone apologize. They basically told easyDNS to fuck off and quit whining after gawkers error almost got easyDNS DDOS'd into oblivion. Even the National Enquirer has more spine (at least when they admit fault)

To sum a few threads posted above with a merging of riffs from Chris Rock: What we need is the tossed salad man "Toss his salad? Nooooooo!!!! I'ma gonna learn, I'ma gonna read, I'ma gonna get a job!"

granted the article is all the way back in early May, but it was clearly an opt-in feature. Whether through ignorance or informed consent, if you want your real life details splattered all over the net, doesn't matter to me, I won't be affected because I won't opt-in.

Quite different from this week's announcement that it's all public and non-discretional. In fact, IMO, the implied subtext was that they anticipated this backlash (as an obvious and reasonable reaction) and (it went without saying) wouldn't have dreamed of making Real-ID mandatory.

Culturally, I think we have become more and more accepting of social networking in the context of your real identity and Facebook

Really? Sadly, /. crowd is atypically informed on the ramifications of losing anonymity on the net. We would certainly be the percentage that is more opposed than ever to losing control over our privacy.

So what we are doing is we are introducing this feature called Real ID, an optional layer of identity
So what changed in just 6 weeks?

not ranting at you, thanks for the article that summarizes exactly what we're all pissy about...I'm not sure I trust their about-face when I find it so hard to believe that they only got to that place in just 6 weeks. Perhaps they'll wait until we've all sunk our money into the new starcraft and the wow expansions then change back again?

Can they seriously not notice the weekly Facebook privacy dramas and not connect the dots as to how this scheme would blow back on them?

I haven't seen the issue addressed, but I can't see that this measure wouldn't violate EU privacy regulations in some way

Stop me if you've heard this one: Innocent until proven guilty. That's the Golden Rule of the Rules of Law in most of western civilisation...except when governments and/or corporations find the rules inconvenient. Us little people have no such option.

rule of law is dead

Hate to reply to my own comment but...

now picture this argument being brought to the US where the FBI gets a button, each of the 50 states gets a button, every county, town, city PD gets a button, etc. etc....the internet would collapse under the weight of all the buttons, none of which would ever get used for a useful purpose...

20 ga-jillion websites in the world, why should facebook and a select few others bear the burden? Australian police want a "report crime" button on a website, put it on their own...you know, where I'd look for one...if i was looking in the first place...whatever the aussie equivalent of dialling 911 is still going to be faster than typing a report into a website...which, in the unlikely event it actually worked, would instantly generate a phone call from the police to the submitter anyway...

can't see the website button getting abused in any way, no siree...

This will assist you in deciding whether it's a good idea to post those hilarious drunken half-naked pictures of you groping that dude dressed up in a Grimace costume.

And therein lies the real problem, of which Facebook is merely the grand-daddy of monetized symptoms: I should have the right to post a compromising picture or story of myself (or an innocent picture or story that is only compromising out of context) to have a private chuckle at my own expense with a few friends and family and suffer no immediate or future consequences. We've all got embarrassing pictures of ourselves and others, and they of us, but it never used to cost us a future job except in the rarest of deliberate & vindictive betrayals by a friend/family member.

Now, the internet is forever and you never know when your privacy might be breached over something you no longer remember. As long as simple cut and paste exists, this risk doesn't go away even with opensource solutions where you control your information exactly the way you want. It's too easy & common for someone to innocently put their copy of that picture on their website or e-mail or whatever, and you can never put that embarrassing genie back in the bottle, just pray that no one stumbles along the wild internet and connects the "whatever" back to you.

Maybe Facebook et al. need to be reigned in, but they are merely taking advantage of (& are a symptom of) the real problem. Society will either have to learn to go back to sharing risque items via "sneakernet" or society & the corporate world will have to learn to disregard anything found on the 'tubes as heresay and unfounded rumour, even when it consists of actual proof.

whoever said I was ok with what corporations are doing with my data, nevermind the government?

of course, the government isn't in a hurry to set limits on what companies can do because then the government can ask companies to "volunteer" to hand over your personal information that the government couldn't collect on its own without a pesky warrant...

can't wean the wife and kids off the tube, but by the time we empty nest we'll be gone. Personally I watch only one show, never catch it live because the timeslot is inconvenient to my work schedule, so I have watched every episode online. I might miss live sports but I don't watch regular season games unless my teams are contenders. I'm betting that by the time I cut the cable, most pro sports will be available live with ads like tv episodes. Heads up to advertisers: I'm more likely to watch your ads when it's 30-60 seconds online than I do when it's 2-5 mins on TV and I can channel hop and get interested in something else or grab a snack in the kitchen, etc... In other words, if you think you're getting your money's worth on broadcast TV, then you'd definitely get more than twice the value from showing half the commercials online at twice the price.

Funny, I do something similar from Canada...make up an address, but postal code H0H0H0 (aitch-zero-aitch-zero-aitch-zero), not an actual place, but the postal code used for mailing letters to Santa...unless it requires american zip code, then it's 90210, of course...

Isn't a privacy policy a contract? If you buy a contract are you not legally obliged to the terms of that contract?

even assuming that it is a legal contract in the first place, the entity that purchases your info from the bankrupted website is probably not obligated to honour the policies.

In general terms, company A goes bankrupt and company B purchases the assets for pennies on the dollar and doesn't purchase (or assume responsibility for) any other facet of the failed company A. Obviously company A made mistakes that caused the business to fail, what's the value in obligating company B to assume any risks by being forced to emulate company A? The emphasis is on getting some money from the purchase of company A's assets back into the hands of secured lenders who will still lose money for having invested in company A.

My long winded point is that company B gets to decide what's an asset (the market value of your personal info that you trusted to company A) and what's a risk/burden they're unwilling to assume (your expectation of privacy from company A)