
Facebook v. Power Ventures - babyshake
http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2009/01/facebook-vs-power-ventures.html
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olegp
Interesting to see the author siding with Facebook on this one.

What if someone wrote a grease monkey script that let me scrape my data from
Facebook's servers? In other words, what if I automated a process I could do
manually without accessing any information I had no rights to in the first
place or affecting the service in any way whatsoever.

Facebook would still be sending take-down notices:
<http://www.chrisfinke.com/addons/facebook-scavenger/>

In the UK the data protection act states that individuals have a right of
access to the information held about them. If a user is blind and can only
access their information using this script, wouldn't Facebook be violating
their rights by preventing them from using it?

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axod
This may spell the downfall of facebook. It's the users data, not facebooks.

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olegp
From Facebook's T&Cs:

"By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and
you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an
irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide
license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform,
publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and
distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site
or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into
other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the
foregoing.

You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to
remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire,
however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your
User Content."

So, one would think that if you were to delete your FB account, all your
(their?) content is removed. Doesn't look like that's the case:
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7196803.stm>

I'm surprised the media hasn't paid more attention to this.

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ajkirwin
The problem here seems to be, from how I see it, that the author doesn't like
the fact that someone can take the data that they can access and port it
somewhere else.

All the whole thing with facebook scavenger is just disturbing. What if I
didn't use a plugin and just saved things locally? Would that be just as bad?
Why?

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olegp
A quote from the author: "I hope other sites violated by Power.com such as
Google, Microsoft, MySpace, and Hi5 put a stop to websites like Power
harvesting user data."

However, Facebook uses exactly the same method for harvesting contact details
from other sites: <http://www.facebook.com/findfriends.php>

Should Facebook sue itself?

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hs
i wonder if everyone takes a revenge on facebook, will it survive?

