Netflix Spilled Your Brokeback Mountain Secret, Lawsuit Claims

Netflix Spilled Your Brokeback Mountain Secret, Lawsuit Claims

An in-the-closet lesbian mother is suing Netflix for privacy invasion, alleging the movie rental company made it possible for her to be outed when it disclosed insufficiently anonymous information about nearly half-a-million customers as part of its $1 million contest to improve its recommendation system.

The suit known as Doe v. Netflix (.pdf) was filed in federal court in California on Thursday, alleging that Netflix violated fair-trade laws and a federal privacy law protecting video rental records, when it launched its popular contest in September 2006.

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In order to get a better movie recommendation algorithm, the online DVD rental company gave more than 50,000 Netflix Prize contestants two massive datasets. The first included 100 million movie ratings, along with the date of the rating, a unique ID number for the subscriber, and the movie info. Based on this data from 480,000 customers, contestants had to come up with a recommendation algorithm that could predict 10 percent better than Netflix how those same subscribers rated other movies.

But video records count among the most privacy protected records in the U.S. — a reaction to a reporter getting Supreme Court–nominee Robert Bork’s records from a video store. The lead attorney on the new suit, Joseph Malley, recently reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with Facebook over its failed Beacon program, which drew fire in part for sharing users’ Blockbuster rentals with their friends.
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So it wasn’t surprising that just weeks after the contest began, two University of Texas researchers — Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov — identified several NetFlix users by comparing their “anonymous” reviews in the Netflix data to ones posted on the Internet Movie Database website. Revelations included identifying their political leanings and sexual orientation.

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The Plaintiffs’ and class members’ movie data and ratings, which were released without authorization or consent, have now become a permanent, public record on the Internet, free to be manipulated and exposed at the whim of those who have the Database.

That’s why the lesbian mom joined the lawsuit as a Jane Doe, according to the complaint, since she believes that “were her sexual orientation public knowledge, it would negatively affect her ability to pursue her livelihood and support her family and would hinder her and her children’s ability to live peaceful lives.”

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/netflix-privacy-lawsuit/

I rented that movie, but it doesn't mean I am gay/lesbian?

Obviously, renting Brokeback Mountain does not make one gay.

The issue here is that researchers were able to use this supposedly anonymous information to identify actual people. Those people -- or anyone else whose identity could potentially be identified from the Netflix database -- have had their privacy compromised.

That's bad enough. And apparently illegal.

But the plaintiffs argue that what has been compromised is not just someone's narrow history of movie rentals. The data available can be used to make assumptions about these people... Whether they are gay, straight, rich, poor, black, white, latino, college educated, liberal, conservative, sports fan, NPR listener, Starbuck's drinker, soccer mom, NASCAR dad, you-name-it. It's not a slam dunk, of course. But marketers know *A LOT* about people, and if they have enough data about you, they can make some guesses about you that are (quite-often-but-not-always) correct.

One of my biggest peeves about this current Facebook/Twitter/Text Messaging generation is their general lack of privacy concern. I think things have eroded so far that the definition of 'reasonable expectation of privacy' is going to be change. The care-free attitude of the current generation will be used to redefine 'reasonable expectation'.

I wish privacy had been a bigger issue in the last campaign. We really need to enact strong privacy laws, as well as requiring opt-in for thing like Netflix did.

I watched a thing about the Mountain Meadows Massacre and after that it started recording stuff off of BYU TV or whatever it is for me.

Straight, rented with the wife, OMG, I am Gay now!