Here, Cynthia publicized her opinions about Coalinga by posting the Ode on MySpace.com, a hugely popular internet site," the 5th District Court of Appeal wrote. "Cynthia's affirmative act made her article available to any person with a computer and thus opened it to the public eye. Under these circumstances, no reasonable person would have had an expectation of privacy regarding the published material.
Legislation is required here - putting something on your MySpace page, where people have to go there in order to see it and few people outside of a small circle usually do, is not the same thing as printing it in the newspaper - where it is intentionally pushed out to a large number of people. Privacy is something which exists in degrees. Daniel Solove has written extensively about this. MySpace Diatribe Brought Death Threats | Threat Level from Wired.com |