Minnesota Public Radio: Court: Invasion of privacy doesn’t require large audience
Minnesota Public Radio is reporting on an opinion (pdf) from the Minnesota Court of Appeals concerning privacy. The case, Yath vs. Fairview Clinics, involves a medical clinic employee posting onto MySpace some embarrassing personal information from a patient’s medical file. One of the questions involved whether “an Internet posting on MySpace.com constitute ‘publicity.’” The court held, “the publicity element of an invasion-of-privacy claim is satisfied when private information is posted on a publicly accessible Internet website.” The court reasoned:
The MySpace.com webpage that triggers Yath‘s claim was such a site. Access to it was not protected, as some webpages are, by a password or some other restrictive safeguard. It was a window that Yath‘s enemies propped open for at least 24 hours allowing any internet-connected voyeur access to private details of her life. The claim therefore survives the “publicity” challenge.
The lower court had ruled differently, agreeing with Fairview that there was no “publicity” because Yath proved that a small number of people viewed the page, which was only available for about 2 days. The appeals court disagreed, and said “publicity” should not be based on the number of actual viewers. The apeals court held:
Like the temporary posting of information in a shop window, the MySpace.com webpage put the information in view of any member of the public — in large or small numbers — who happened by. The number of actual viewers is irrelevant.
The court likened Web sites and online postings to newspaper or radio publication of information.
If a late-night radio broadcast aired for a few seconds and potentially heard by a few hundred (or by no one) constitutes publicity as a matter of law, a maliciously fashioned webpage posted for one or two days and potentially read by hundreds, thousands, millions (or by no one) also constitutes publicity as a matter of law.
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