Disney Fulfils Toysmart Com S Privacy Promise
Martin Burns
Member info
User since: 26 Apr 1999
Articles written: 143
When Disney-owned toysmart.com closed its routers last year, it generated substantial anger by trying to sell off its customer database to pay off its creditors. Why? Because its privacy policy stated very clearly that it would never transfer customer records to a third party.
Now in the UK, this wouldn't have been possible because we have
real data protection legislation. However, the US federal bankrupcy court doesn't see it that way, and was insisting that the database, as an asset, be sold.
However, in a breathtaking moment of good sense,
another Disney subsidiary will pay toysmart $50,000 to destroy the database.
Result: Creditors happy with the money. Customers happy with the privacy. Disney happy with the positive PR. World+Dog looks on and cheers.
Martin Burns has been doing this stuff since Netscape 1.0 days. Starting with the communication ends that online media support, he moved back through design, HTML and server-side code. Then he got into running the whole show. These days he's working for these people as a Project Manager, and still thinks (nearly 6 years on) it's a hell of a lot better than working for a dot-com. In his Copious Free Time™, he helps out running a Cloth Nappies online store.
Amongst his favourite things is Zope
He's been a member of evolt.org since the very early days, a board member, a president, a writer and even contributed a modest amount of template code for the current site. Above all, he likes evolt.org to do things because it knowingly chooses to do so, rather than randomly stumbling into them. He's also one of the boys and girls who beervolts in the UK, although the arrival of small children in his life have knocked the frequency for 6.
Most likely to ask: Why would a client pay you to do that?
Least likely to ask: Why isn't that navigation frame in Flash?
