FTC Goes After Jerk.com for Online Harassment of Kids

Over time the website changed. According to the petition to quash filed by Jerk.com a consumer who wants his or her profile removed from Jerk.com may pay a $25 fee for customer support, which in my opinion is nothing more than an electronic, modern-day extortion racket. Jerk.com disregards copyrights in photographs, seemingly sucks photographs from Facebook profiles without permission and then will take you down if you pay $25. Exactly how that differs on a conceptual level from mafioso shakedowns on generations past escapes me.

The Jerk.com petition to quash also claimed that Jerk receives requests to remove a profile by email and through its Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) agent, and also claims to remove children’s profiles regardless of the source of the removal request. I don’t doubt that Jerk.com removes profiles where there is a DMCA takedown notice. What is strange, however, is that they refused to tell me who their DMCA agent is.  Jerk.com’ attorney  Maria Crimi Speth communicated with me during the summer of 2012 and blamed me for all the DMCA takedown notices they were receiving. It seems I was the only one writing about Jerk.com as a problem and they were getting numerous DMCA takedown requests. I asked her who their DMCA agent was and never received a response. Ultimately, I decided if they were not going to inform me as to who their duly authorized DMCA agent is then I would tell folks I couldn’t get that information and they should direct takedown requests to Ms. Speth. See Jerk.com: Who to Contact to Get Removed.

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The FTC Investigation

In April 2012, after receiving hundreds of complaints about Jerk, FTC staff opened an investigation. The investigation focused initially on whether Jerk.com was collecting information from children in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”). On July 27, 2012, the Commission issued a Civil Investigative Demand (CID) for documents and interrogatories for information relating to Jerk.com’s data collection practices and its profiles of children.

After reviewing Jerk’s responses to the CID and information from other sources, including consumer complaints, the FTC Staff determined that it was necessary to expand the focus of the investigation also to inquire into the source of information appearing on Jerk.com – in particular, whether Jerk may have created profiles on its website by harvesting photos from the Internet. Consumers have complained that Jerk.com contains private photos from Facebook, a complaint that we hear all the time at IPWatchdog.com. In fact, we have even recently heard that a picture appearing only on Facebook and then used on Jerk.com miraculously vanished from Jerk.com when the person deleted the photo from her Facebook account. If true that suggests that Jerk.com is engaging in some kind of elaborate inline linking of images from Facebook. Based on what I have been able to uncover myself that would seem to be a change in the way Jerk.com acquires photographs. The change is not insignificant given that inline linking has historically not been considered to be copyright infringement. Of course, if this type of unauthorized and harassing use of photographs online is beyond the reach of legal processes that would likely significantly curtail usage of photo sharing websites. Indeed, Facebook and other photo sharing websites may wind up being the ones who would have to stop Jerk.com for unauthorized access to their network. Something that does have precedent in case law.

In any event, on February 13, 2013, as part of the broader inquiry, the Commission issued a CID to Jerk seeking testimony on ten subjects relating to Jerk’s responses to the prior CID; Jerk’s operations; Jerk’s interactions with other social media sites, including Facebook and Twitter; and Jerk’s communications with consumers. The CID asked Jerk to designate and make available one or more officers, directors, or others to testify on Jerk’s behalf at an investigational hearing on April 3, 2013 at the FTC’s San Francisco office.

On March 15, 2013, Jerk submitted the instant petition seeking to quash the CID seeking its testimony on the topics enumerated above.

The FTC Ruling on the Petition to Quash