RSSHey, Sony, leave those kids alone: Settlement in COPPA case
By Angela Gunn | Published December 11, 2008, 6:57 PM
The largest COPPA settlement to date was handed down Thursday when Sony BMG agreed to pay out $1 million for having collected and used without parental consent personal information on tens of thousands of kids under 13.
The violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act involved 196 fan sites for musical acts such as Good Charlotte, Kelly Clarkson, Chris Brown, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. According to the US Federal Trade Commission complaint, Sony BMG's sign-up process for viewing and participating in such sites required the user to enter their name, date of birth, email address, mobile phone number, gender, city, state, and country.
COPPA specifies fairly clear privacy protections for the 12-and-under set. But even though the site claimed that visitors under 13 would be "restricted from participating in Sony Music's Web page activities," they were not. Neither were such accounts flagged with a cookie or other means of telling whose information couldn't legally be retained.
Eventually, Sony Music's databank held information on over 30,000 kids, many of whom went on to build profile pages (which could display their age), enroll in fan clubs that sent e-mail to them directly, and so forth. Sony Music (formerly Sony BMG, and still often referred to as such) neither took the steps to get in touch with parents concerning their kids' participation nor gave parents the required ability to review the information collected from their kids, or to have it deleted.
Bad Sony! No biscuit! "Sites with social networking features, like any Web sites, need to get parental consent before collecting kids' personal information," said FTC Chairman William E. Kovacic. "Sony Music is paying the penalty for falling down on its COPPA obligations."
The penalty works out to around $33/child. The order also requires that Sony Music clean up its act, delete all the improperly collected information, acquaint its employees with the FTC's "How to Comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule" factsheet, and abide by various other record-keeping, reporting, and compliance standards.
The kids won't be seeing any of that money for themselves. In fact, the result most likely to affect users of Sony Music's sites involves new links to the FTC. The settlement requires that for the next five years, there should appear on Sony Music's sites links to the COPPA section on ftc.gov and, on pages where one can create a publicly viewable profile, to the social networking section of the FTC's onguardonline.gov.
Sony Music was not available for comment on our deadline.
man does this stink for sony
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perhaps the courts should have used the same formula that the record companies use, so instead of $33 per child it would be $5000 or more per child.
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How true, but then again who said our system was "just"?
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A more appropriate settlement ought to be that Sony rewards all these abused kiddies with a Kimber Ultra Carry to take to school with them.
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so where were the parents when their little tots were signing up for said sites?
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So What.... who cares... bottom line: Everyone should know that America is a suing country! Everyone wants to be compensated for each others' mistakes. And why is this such news?? Sony & other established companies regularly are in court.. so where is the mention of the other court cases? Blah, Blah, Blah... They write about this as though Sony 'really messed up this time.' LOLOLOL! They can care less about the silly court fines. They seem to forget that they're suing a company with a household name!! I'm pretty sure Sony is used to spending big money; research & development, insurance, payroll, budgets for projects, contracts, court fees, and etc... I'm pretty sure Sony's mistake of obtaining personal information of minors was legit; I mean, what kind of harm was Sony planning to do with this vital information?? It's not like Kay-B Toy Stores was involved... or Zody's... or Newberries...
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How really gets the money....
A bunch of or other lawyers!
so who cares?
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They got away with a slap on the wrist. They should have been fined 1 billion.
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This doesn't sound sinister or bad to me. What it sounds like is a case of bad web design and lack of communication between all the individuals involved in the process. When designing and rolling out those online services they simply didn't think it through well enough in order to get into full compliance with that legislation and perhaps some people acted on their own without giving it much thought in any case. I know how annoying it is to deal with COPPA when designing and maintaining a web service. It's a pain in the bum because those things are never thought out too well. As it is, one million in fines to a company like Sony is nothing.
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Probably so, that's why the million dollar fine was so low. Sony can get that from a few music downloaders :)
You're right, this was just crappy design. But that poor design could have caused injury to a minor. Would you do online banking with a site that was poorly designed? While stealing money is far more common than hurting kids (thank goodness), it still doesn't excuse the fact that they "could" have inadvertently done so.
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Sony is in huge trouble (financially) in case anyone doesn't know. The PS3 and Blu Ray have cost them untold hundreds of millions so far.
Wait until the 2008 numbers come out.
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Not to confuse you, but they have been reporting financials each quarter of 2008.
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Did you see Toshiba's numbers? What about GM or Ford? What about Bear Stearns? Walmart? K-Mart?
In case you didn't no, there is a world wide recession and ALL companies are posting bad numbers. Sony is not alone.
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Perhaps you are not familiar that this status obsessed pubescent, regardless of such superfluous data often referred to as facts, is rabidly preoccupied with bashing Sony.
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Good to hear, hope they hurt bad for a long time, and then go bankrupt and out of business. Its a pipe dream, I know...
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since when did you start using grown-up words?
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