Privacy…A Thing of The Past

           It is 2007, and completely normal to have your life plastered all over the Internet, right? Let’s face it, we check our Facebooks compulsively, post pictures from our last party the next morning, and talk about our lives on public web pages without even considering who might be reading it. It is sometimes hard to imagine life without cyberspace, isn’t it? Most of us probably don’t even think twice about who is seeing our information, or where it might end up. Yet, the danger of our growing Internet lives, where nothing gets censored, is growing rapidly.

            Recently, a high school student from Texas realized the hard way just where your pictures can end up by posting them on the Internet. 16-year-old Alison Chang was in a photo posted by her church youth counselor in April on Flickr.com, a photo-sharing website hosted by Yahoo Inc. However, the problem arose when a random photographer took a picture of a Virgin Mobile ad in Australia and posted it on his own photo-sharing website, and Chang happened to come across his page. Needless to say, she was shocked to see her picture on a large billboard at a bus station in Adelaide, Australia.

            Chang’s family filed a lawsuit on September 20th, 2007, claiming that Alison was humiliated by her peers and has been exposed to public scrutiny by people who can now search for her on internet sites such as Google.

            The ad displays the words “Dump your pen friend” over Alison’s picture. The ad is a part of Virgin Mobile’s “Are You With Us Or What?” campaign, featuring the slogan “Free Text Virgin to Virgin”, which the Chang’s claim is emotionally degrading. The Chang family is suing for invasion of privacy and are accusing Virgin Mobile USA LLC, its Australian counterpart, and Creative Commons Corp, a Massachusetts nonprofit that licenses sharing of Flickr photos, of the violation.

            The Virgin Mobile affiliate in Australia declines to comment, and actually doesn’t have any obligation to defend themselves. The Creative Commons License, that Flickr.com allows people to release their photos under, only applies to the rights of the photographer as owner of the photo and does not include the rights of those depicted in the photo.

        Alison’s lawyer is hoping that, if anything, she will receive a payment to settle the lawsuit, although the amount is unknown. The truth is, anyone being featured in a worldwide ad campaign for a major telephone company should be receiving a large sum of money, yet Alison will be lucky if she walks away with $5,000. So, my advice to you kids is: keep your photos clean, and your dirty laundry private.