When you post on the internet highly negative things about people, towns, or even countries, and then suffer the ire of the people you diss online, can you claim that your privacy was violated?
Well, Cynthia Moreno posted in Myspace about her hometown in Coalinga, California, and the angry residents found out about it after it was re-posted in the town’s newspaper.
In MySpace Musings Aren’t Private, Appeals Court Rules, we read:
Moreno sued for invasion of privacy, but late Thursday a Fresno, Calif.-based appellate court said she had no grounds even if she meant her thoughts for a limited audience on her MySpace page.
“The facts contained in the article were not private,” 5th District Court of Appeal Justice Bert Levy wrote. “Rather, once posted on myspace.com, this article was available to anyone with Internet access.”
I wonder if Cynthia made the post available to a limited set of Myspace friends. Perhaps not, as the first-name-only Myspace account probably gave her some sense of online privacy security. If so, then it was most likely open and accessible to a rather large group of people online.
If you want to be snarky online, think not once, but twice. Apparently, there is no such thing as privacy on the internet.
