Full Employment For Facebook Lawyers

I have to believe that Facebook keeps lots of lawyers busy. I may not be in the majority here, but purely as a matter of self interest, I say that’s a good thing. Readers may disagree. In any event, here’s the latest lawyer stimulus package courtesy of the social networking giant. Facebook has been sued in a class action in California. The suit is brought on behalf of minors whose name and likeness has been used on “landing pages” without proper consent. According to the suit, this violates a California law that prohibits using the name or likeness of a minor in advertising without parental consent. And the interesting question will be whether a “landing page” is advertising. The suit describes the landing page as: “a destination for people conducting . . . internet search engine searches of the names of persons who are Facebook members, so that the search result will lead . . . to a special “landing page created by Facebook.” The suit continues, “[t]he purpose of the ‘landing page’ is not to reveal the content of a member’s page, but solely to give the searcher the opportunity and incentive to become a member of the Facebook social networking site.” Kind of sounds like an ad when you put it that way. It will be interesting to see what the Facebook lawyers have to say.