Les Liens Invisibles reply to Facebook

December 23rd, 2009

“The information within the seppukoo.com website has been communicated to my clients voluntarily by the users. The facebook users have decided of their own accord to share their data with the www.seppukoo.com website and to forward a personalised message of farewell containing an invitation to “seppukoo” all their friends.”[...]

My clients have the right to receive information, ideas, and photographs from those people who are the legitimate proprietors of this data and can decide to share this data or to store it, with the prior consent of its respective owners. All of this is freedom of expression and the manifestation of thought and free circulation of ideas that is accepted and guaranteed in Europe and in the U.S.A. [...]

Facebook cannot order the erasure of data that does not belong to it, acting against the free will of the owners of such data. This is not protection of privacy, but rather a violation of the free will of citizens that can decide freely and for themselves how to arrange their personal sphere. [...]

“The “Les liens invisibles” group will delete all of the information on the www.seppukoo.com website only if the owners of such information request it, but not if facebook does so.” [...]

In light of these considerations we are sorry to inform you that my clients will not delete their www.seppukoo.com website, nor will they delete the data therein, as facebook has ordered.

Beside the paternalistic approach a totalitarian data control ambition becomes self-evident: Maria Teresa Votta, Les Liens Invisibles’ legal adviser, replies to Facebook’s Cease and Desist, defending the users freedom and data ownership.

Read the full reply.