Why Should Anyone Form Official Club Organizations Anymore? With the rise of Facebook, and the &quot;Groups&quot; it enables it's users to create and join, I worry that the traditional club is now obsolete. A friend of mine formed a local car &quot;group&quot; on Facebook because he didn't want to pay dues for the local official club. Before he formed the group, which he expected to do things like &quot;spirited&quot; driving events, as well as other social events, he spoke to a lawyer to find out about his potential liabilities. The lawyer told him that because everyone was at his &quot;events&quot; voluntarily, and no one was paying dues, he held no liability whatsoever. I know that the local official car club that I am a part of has club insurance for our events, and we require dues to be paid each year (a very small sum). I don't know what the insurance actually covers, but if you can get away without being liable simply by not having dues, then are there any advantages to forming or joining an official club? Can Facebook group members legally receive discounts or gifts from organizations like the parts department of a dealership that likes the group? Is a Facebook group truly immune to legal action? What does club insurance typically cover anyway? Is a Facebook group immune to shutdown attempts by an official organization (eg. could the Porsche Club of America force the shut down of an unaffiliated Jonestown, MA Porsches Facebook group)? Are there any other benefits to an official club organization that I'm missing? EDIT I'm not sure what terminology to use here, so I made some stuff up. Specifically, I got questions about &quot;Official Club Organization&quot;. I'm using this to describe an organization that is legally affiliated with and supported by the Manufacturer of the cars. An example would be the Porsche Club of America.
I think the question answers itself : what's being put forward as a problem (that official organisations can cover their members' liability at events) is actually their main advantage. Liability doesn't go away - assuming your friend's lawyer's advice was accurate, it might have been better phrased as &quot;liability will be on the participants&quot;. I'm not sure it's entirely right (though it might just be overly specific) in the way it's been reported - if there was anything that could be considered incitement to, or encouragement of, unlawful activity, there may be an additional liability on the person whose name is attached to the group, and possibly the platform used (though this is a young area of law at the moment). What's covered by the insurance will be dependent on the policy, so that's not a question that The Bloke On The Internet can answer. In terms of discounts, I don't see any reason these couldn't be offered on a social media group - or that there would be a significant difference between a social media group, an official or unofficial website, or coupons published in a magazine or distributed in flyers on a street corner. It's worth bearing in mind that distributors don't do this out of kindness - it's just advertising. If an official club, or the associated manufacturer (the owner of the brand), believed there was quantifiable loss - primarily financial, but possibly reputational - there may be grounds to demand any unofficial group cease and desist, irrespective of where (social media, websites, physical premises) they had a presence. But perhaps the greatest advantage (though I'm drifting off topic for this SE) for an official group is that it can use whichever medium it considers most useful at the time, or a combination of several. One tied to a specific social media platform will always be limited in its longevity.
Per GDPR Art 79, you can sue data controllers if you consider your rights to have been violated. Where you have suffered damages due to GDPR infringements, you also have a right to compensation per Art 82. However, your rights may not have been violate as far as the GDPR is concerned. Under the GDPR any kind of personal data processing needs a clear purpose, and that purpose needs a legal basis. One possible legal basis is consent, but there also are others (such as legitimate interest). Just because you didn't consent doesn't mean that your rights have been violated. Where processing is based on legitimate interest, you can object to that processing of your personal data – but your rights must be balanced against that legitimate interest (Art 21). If your friends post a photo and you only appear in the background, your friends' legitimate interest to post that photo likely outweighs your rights. In practice, suing Facebook because of GDPR infringement is not a sensible way to achieve the outcomes that you likely want. First, this is expensive. Second, it is arguable whether Facebook or your friends should be the defendant. Third, removal of existing data won't prevent the processing of new data in the future. It would be more sensible to treat this as an interpersonal rather than a legal problem, and to talk with your friends so that they don't include you in their photos that they would like to share online. I've focussed on photos because their situation is fairly clear. Voice snippets might not count as personal data when you are not identifiable in them. Personal assistant apps should not be listening continuously, but only start recording when a wake-word is recognized.
I assume you're talking about corporations, not LLCs ("limited liability companies"). LLCs aren't corporations and don't issue shares of stock, and in any event Facebook is a corporation. Information relating to the shares of a corporation is typically outlined in the articles of incorporation, but practices and governing law varies by state and by corporation. Delaware, where most large US corporations are incorporated, requires the certificate of incorporation to list the total number of shares to be issued and the number of shares in each class, as well as information about the "powers, preferences and rights, and the qualifications, limitations or restrictions" of the share classes. See 8 Del. C. § 102(a)(4). Facebook's October 2010 articles of incorporation can be found here, and information about its classes of stock can be found in Article IV.
Do I have standing to sue a credit bureau or lender after being approved for a loan but being prevented from signing due to their error? Unfortunately, no. The email you got from the loan agency reflects that no contract was formed yet. The email merely is the loan agency's expression of interest to proceed toward the formation of that contract. Absent that formation of the contract, even if for reasons beyond your control, you are not entitled to the benefits or consideration(s) the contract would provide. Nor would the lender be entitled to your compliance with the terms of that contract, terms which might not even be informed --let alone known-- to you. There is no legal obligation from one party to the other. Lastly, the agency's or bureau's faulty process/questionnaire is not actionable either. Lender's reluctance to employ an alternative method is within his freedom of contract.
The information in telephone books is public. so are postal change-of-address records. So are records of the ownership of real estate. So are vital statistics such as birth records. So are voter registration lists -- i myself purchased a voter registration list (in digital form) for a municipality which showed people's names, addresses, and the years when they voted, when I was a political candidate for local office in NJ. It cost about $100. I believe that many states also make driver's license information available for a fee to marketers. Credit records are available for certain limited purposes, also. No doubt there are other public sources I haven't thought of. If such a site relies on public records, or other publicly available data, it is not illegal. Many such sites offer to remove names on an opt-out basis, but there is no legal requirement that sites do so. This kind of information is not considered nto be "private facts" under US tort law. Aside from opting out, if the sites provide that option, I don't think you have any recourse. One could ask the local legislature to pass a law prohibiting such sites, or making them require consent, similar to the GDPR that the EU has. But I don't know of any such law in the US to date.
I think the concerns are more economic than legal, although legal concerns are sometimes present. You don't want people to trash the place. You want there to be an &quot;authority figure&quot; whose presence encourages order, deal with unexpected situations, and whom people who aren't tech savvy feel comfortable dealing with, and it can create a better customer service relationship. It really depends on the nature of the premises. There is not a one size fits all rule. There are situations where one doesn't have someone on the premises. There are bank vestibules with automatic teller machines in them. There are coin entry bathroom/shower facilities. There are self-storage facilities that work like that. There are deeply rural places with low traffic that rely on an honor system rather than trying to monitor use (e.g. some campsites). There are AirBnB type rentals. The are car repair shops with after hours drop off boxes. On the other hand, there are some situations where it is pretty much inconceivable that you wouldn't have someone one site monitoring the situation. I'm pretty sure that you have to have someone on premises for a pub. I'm sure it is necessary in places where you have unaccompanied minors (at a minimum, as a practical reality for liability purposes). There aren't many medical services that can be provided in that format (although there might be a few).
Let me be sure that I understand the situation. You set up an account with Big Company, which uses BigCo as a trademark. You want email about that account to reach you with a unique address, so you set up 'BigCo@RichDomain.Com" and gave that as your email when setting up tha account. You don't plan to use that address for any purpose but communications from BigCo to you and from you to them. (Of course these aren't the actual names.) Have I understood the situation correctly? It seems that you ar not using 'BigCo" in trade, nor are you likely to be confused with an official representative of BigCo, so you are not infringing their trademark. However, someone using such an email more generally could perhaps be so confuse, so BigCo has a somewhat legitimate concern, as they cannot know the very limited use you plan to make of this address. The only way that the could force you not to use such an email address would be via a court order as part of a suit for trademark infringement, whcih under the circumstances I doubt they would get. However, unless they have some sort of contract with you to the contrary, they can control who registers on their site. and could refuse to register you using an email address that includes their name or alias. Convincing them to accept your registration, even though it does no harm to them, will almost surely be more trouble than it is worth. Give them "BigFirm@RichDomain.Com" or something else that is not their name, but will suggest their name enough that you will know who it is. This will serve your purpose fully, and avoid a long argument with people who are reading from a script (once you get past the automated process, if you can even do that). This is all assuming that I have understood the situation correctly. I am also largely assuming US law, since you didn't mention a jurisdiction. (EDIT: UK law should not be very different on these points.)
As someone who is not a lawyer, but is familiar with FERPA and university policies as a former instructor, I would be more than willing to bet that you signed or otherwise agreed to some type of Terms of Service before being given access to that type of service. There are almost certainly numerous things you signed to become a student, as well as various policies you agreed to in first gaining access to the computer services, which would apply here. I can tell you with certainty that the school where I was a student had a policy that I agreed to that they would make certain information available to other students unless I chose for it to be restricted. However, my university did not have any photos of students that were viewable by other students in a directory. That said, there were also times I participated in extra-curricular activities where I was required to sign release forms giving the school the rights to video tape, record, and photograph me, and to do what they wished with those things. So, with that in mind, I suspect that's partly due to FERPA restrictions, but also largely due to their own privacy policies that go beyond what FERPA requires. All in all, I doubt they would be okay with you using their photos for your own private use - student privacy is something that is taken very seriously.