Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) continues its struggles and battles overseas, getting fined $109,000 (100,000 euros) by a German court in its latest skirmish. According to Reuters, a consumer group said yesterday that the social media giant had to pay up as it failed to comply with local authorities’ demand to properly inform users about how their intellectual property could be used.
The ruling comes after the company’s founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, made a visit to Berlin, Germany last week. There, he was questioned about Facebook’s user privacy policy, data protection practices, and efforts on stopping hate speech. The company has faced severe criticism on its delayed measures to stop online hate speech in Germany.
Given the country’s immigrant situation and global Islamic State terrorism, a lot of racism and Neo-Nazi ideologies are being propagated on the social network. However, Facebook has now actively started to remove such violence-inducing and racist content from the social platform.
Additionally, European authorities have increasingly been worried as the company transfers user data overseas, which recently brought the Safe Harbor agreement into question, following the lawsuit filed by Austrian law student Max Schrems. Last week in Berlin, Mr. Zuckerberg was on a charm offensive as he smartly addressed these sensitive topics and expressed support for authorities’ concerns, while ducking some questions.
The regional court of Berlin ruled that the company did not sufficiently alter the working of an intellectual property clause in its terms and conditions, despite being told to do so following a complaint filing by the Federation of German Consumer Organizations. The entity’s head, Klaus Mueller, said that Facebook keeps attempting to evade customer laws in Germany as well as in the entire continent. He added that local and foreign companies must abide by the law and judicial decisions no matter what.
In March 2012, a German court originally ruled that the company’s terms and conditions were vague on the extent to which it could go with users’ data and intellectual property, implying Facebook could license its users’ photos and videos to third parties for business reasons. However, the authorities' primary issue was Facebook's compliance with the US government to provide data for its mass surveillance programs. After Edward Snowden’s revelations on the US government’s spying programs and how the tech industry complies, the issue has gained more gravity.
While Facebook complied with the ruling four years ago, the Berlin court now concludes that it merely changed the wording of the clause in question without changing the message that it conveyed. Meanwhile, the company defended itself saying that it had complied with the original ruling and was issued the fine because it couldn’t implement the changes quickly enough. Facebook is facing widespread criticism and scrutiny by the United Nations and European countries for a range of activities, including tax evasion, privacy policy violation, data transferring and unwillingness to comply with demands to censor content and keep matters civilized.
