Comments on: It’s Not Possible To Steal Facebook ‘Likes’–Mattocks v. BET https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2014/08/its-not-possible-to-steal-facebook-likes-mattocks-v-bet.htm Mon, 25 Aug 2014 20:09:53 +0000 hourly 1 By: Lazy Random Feed Time… | C y b e r L a w L a t e l y https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2014/08/its-not-possible-to-steal-facebook-likes-mattocks-v-bet.htm#comment-987 Mon, 25 Aug 2014 20:09:53 +0000 http://blog.ericgoldman.org/?p=12947#comment-987 […] It’s Not Possible To Steal Facebook ‘Likes’–Mattocks v. BET — Venkat Balasubramani / Technology & Marketing Law Blog […]

]]> By: Theperkyone https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2014/08/its-not-possible-to-steal-facebook-likes-mattocks-v-bet.htm#comment-985 Sat, 23 Aug 2014 00:05:00 +0000 http://blog.ericgoldman.org/?p=12947#comment-985 The ruling goes astray in several ways but the one I want to focus on here is the misplaced reliance that the court places in the “fleetingness” on internet friendship. It was Holmes who said back in the early part of the last century that the future of the law would be the man of statistics and the court’s analysis falls apart when we consider statistics. For the fact is that the plaintiff did not object to the stealing of a single like, which is indeed fleeting, but to the stealing of likes, two to six million likes, which are not fleeting at all when taken in the aggregate. Indeed, the fact that they are not fleeting is the very reason why BET wanted them converted.

So while a single like is fleeting it is also irrelevant to any proper analysis of the case. The question is whether millions of likes are fleeting and the answer to the question is clearly no.

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