

Facebook Threatens Greasemonkey Script Writer - yanw
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100324/1806018708.shtml

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moeffju
Greasemonkey Script Authors have been threatened before and they will continue
to be threatened until one of them actually takes the threats to court (and
wins).

In the beginning of userscripts.org, I hosted the domain in Germany, which
opened up a whole other can of worms since it was not yet clear whether the
domain owner could be held responsible for user-posted content. A bunch of
people and companies complained and sent legal threats until we finally
decided to transfer the domain to the US, where the law was a little saner.

I would be interested in a legal analysis. To me, it seems logical that I can
do whatever I want with data in my browser's memory. But the law might not
agree with my hacker's intuition.

~~~
teej
I'd like to point out that in this case Facebook is only pursuing trademark
issues. They have not asked the author to take down the script. They asked him
to change his name from "Facebook Purity". He changed it to "FB Purity".
Facebook says that's not good enough. I'm inclined to agree.

~~~
barrkel
And I guess the fact you didn't mention your obvious conflict of interest in
this specific case is perfectly cromulent, eh?

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siculars
At some point in the future the web will become like the book: static to the
end user. Or, gasp, worse: the dvd. At least a book lets you skip pages. Is it
that hard to see a future where groups like Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Warner
Brother, Disney, Sony, etc. force content consumers to consume content the way
they want it to be consumed? Take a look at all the new digital set top boxes
out there that disallow you from making copies of your own content.

Today Facebook goes after the script author. Tomorrow they will go after the
end user. This is straight BS. We can't let it happen.

"THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a
Communist.

THEN THEY CAME for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't
a trade unionist.

THEN THEY CAME for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a
Protestant.

THEN THEY CAME for me and by that time no one was left to speak up." \--Martin
Niemöller <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came>

~~~
siculars
Clearly this isn't popular here but I stand by it. The Internet and everything
about it is the new printed word, book, newspaper, radio and tv. And so
organizations will try to control every aspect of it. If Orwell rewrote 1984
as 2084 I'm sure there would be a few lines about how the Protect Information
Everywhere Act of 2020 outlawed end user content modification by outlawing
programs like greasemonkey. Doubleplus ungood indeed.

~~~
maukdaddy
It's a fucking script, not genocide. Big difference.

~~~
siculars
Retract the fangs, mate. You're not the guy at Facebook pulling the trigger on
these decisions, are you? Yes, yes, it's just a script, duh. I just like to
move the pieces on the board a few steps at a time. I like to follow the
"Don't sweat the small stuff" philosophy as much as anybody but the slope is
slippery and someones gotta say "Hell no."

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Ernestas
The script is very useful. Using it seems like using twitter. No noise.

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tbeseda
I received a similar notice for a few userscripts I wrote and published in
2006-07.

I framed the letter from their lawyer and hung it on my dorm wall.

I tried to support and update my scripts as long as I could, but they would
continuously change class names, layout, and data structures to thwart
userscripts.

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chadgeidel
I don't understand why you would need this script. The functionality is built
right into the Facebook "feed" - just "mouse over" the Mafia Wars notification
and there's a big button "Block Mafia Wars".

Of course, you have to click for every app, but it's a small price to pay.

~~~
Timothee
Since I thought about writing a similar script I can tell you why it can be
useful:

\- for one thing, as you said, you would need to do it for all the apps. I
haven't tried the script but it sounds like it would hide all the apps besides
basic Facebook stuff (status, pictures…), without you doing anything more.

\- there are some things that you can't hide like new friendships, or "likes",
"fans". ("Cindy and Mark are now friends", "Dufus became a fan of
Marshmallows"…) If you were to hide these, you actually hide everything from
that person.

~~~
lotharbot
_"you would need to do it for all the apps"_

If "all the apps" meant the half-dozen apps most played by your friends, this
wouldn't be so bad.

What makes this so bad is facebook sweepstakes apps that are essentially
copies of each other. _Sweepstakes #1: win an ipod nano_ is a different app
than _sweepstakes #2: win an ipod touch_ , which is different again from
_sweepstakes #3: win a macbook_.

My dad enters a lot of sweepstakes (winning many thousands of dollars worth of
stuff per year). When he reached sweepstakes #100 from the same company, I
asked him to set up a second facebook profile just for sweepstakes, so I could
block them all with one click. Having a script to do it would be even better.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Maybe I'm an asshole, but I'd simply hide him from my feed altogether, and
maybe check his page once a week or so for any updates.

~~~
lotharbot
I _did_ hide him from my feed altogether -- or, rather, his sweeps-entering
profile. For the trouble of having him set up an extra profile, I saved the
trouble of having to hide apps OR specially check out his page.

