
 Facebook blocks Scoble for downloading his contacts, sparks revolt - nickb
http://uk.techcrunch.com/2008/01/03/facebook-blocks-scoble-for-downloading-his-contacts/
======
sethjohn
Again, the future of the web is being written by petty acts of criminality.
(aka civil disobedience, aka breaking stupid rules)

Just as the entertainment industry will eventually have to adapt to the
reality of file-sharing, regardless of the fact that the law is on their
side...the future of data portability will be driven by technology development
and people's willingness to break the rules, not by the Facebook TOS.

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ojbyrne
Who cares? I don't mean to be flippant, this just seems like the definition of
something that only matters to a lot of self-important bloggers.

~~~
axod
I too don't quite understand the mentality of people who have 5,000+
'friends'.

~~~
bayareaguy
Caveat: I've never used facebook other than once when I signed up in order to
take a peek at the documentation for Thrift (
<http://developers.facebook.com/thrift> ).

That said, my experience with Orkut is that it's next to trivial to end up
with a bazillion friends. This is because friends never get dropped off your
list and people outside your immediate circle often remember you when they see
your name on someone elses list and consequently ask to be your friend
regardless of the fact that you may not have spoken to them in a decade.

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cstejerean
what matters is that Facebook would disable your account for attempting to get
your data out of it. For this and many other reasons I've deleted my Facebook
account (and it wasn't easy).

~~~
tomjen
If the data is on facebook servers, it is on private property and they have
every right to decide who has access to their private property.

~~~
run4yourlives
I think the point is that it violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the
whole "social network" idea.

~~~
pg
I think it violates a principle broader than that. I think everything you
store in a web app, you ought to be able to get back out. As far as I know,
Google meets this standard.

I'm not saying that sites have to give users _all_ the information they have
about them, btw-- just that they should allow users to retrieve information
they have supplied or been given by others. E.g. an email app should let you
export (or at least not deliberatebly block you from exporting) emails you've
sent and received. Contact info of people who've added you as friends seems in
the same class as email sent to you.

~~~
run4yourlives
> I think everything you store in a web app, you ought to be able to get back
> out.

I think so as well, but given that the sanctity of data ownership is a rather
new phenomena - for example, you wouldn't ask your bank for all your
transaction history - I can give that they may not feel that they are obliged
to return it.

~~~
plinkplonk
"you wouldn't ask your bank for all your transaction history - I can give that
they may not feel that they are obliged to return it."

huh? Here in India you can ask any bank for your transaction history and
they'll give it to you. You might have to go to the local branch and show id
and wait while they print out the transaction history, but you'll get it for
sure.

~~~
run4yourlives
Well, you could probably do that here too, although they might make you pay
for anything historical. I was thinking more from a web-app standpoint. It's
not the greatest of examples, put the point is that the bank doesn't see
themselves as under any real obligation to view your transactions as anything
but their data.

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tomjen
Facebook is private property, so they can ban anyone they want (otherwise what
is the point of the fourth amendment?)

~~~
batasrki
OK, fair enough. But why does Facebook allow you to import data from other web
services, like Gmail, but disallow you to export data from their database?

If they're going to be petty about that, Scoble's pettiness is justified in my
mind.

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jakewolf
He knew what he was doing all along.

"That's part of my job to see how good their terms of service are, and how
well enforced they are." [http://scobleizer.com/2008/01/03/ive-been-kicked-
off-of-face...](http://scobleizer.com/2008/01/03/ive-been-kicked-off-of-
facebook/#comment-1856083)

Since when is breaking a contract part of one's job?

