Ashby Jones:

How do social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace fit within the world of privacy law? Are such sites private rooms in which one can pen his or her internal thoughts without fear of others misappropriating such thoughts? Or are such sites really just bulletin boards for the world?

An appellate court in California weighed in on the issue on Friday, and basically sided with the bulletin-board position.

This case seems pretty cut-and-dry, so the verdict is unsurprising. A more interesting test case would involve the public redistribution of content that the author/creator did not make generally available.

From the archive, Decius:

In my view the combined effect of the third-party doctrine, which states that what you tell Google you've told the government, and the notion that machines cannot violate your privacy, will enable the rise of a total surveillance society in which everyone is watched by law enforcement all the time.

MySpace a Bulletin Board, Not Private Room, Says California Court