Facebook Threatens Greasemonkey Script Writer | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Threatens Greasemonkey Script Writer

techdirt.com

48 pointsyanw25 comments

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.

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.

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

Ahem, "Fluff Busting Purity"... you could also call it "Fluff BP", but then British Petroleum might get upset too.

Do they really even have a trademark case here? It seems there's very little likelihood of confusion between "Facebook Purity", a Greasemonkey script, and "Facebook", a social-networking website.

If it were a violation, then the hundreds of Greasemonkey scripts that use the trademarked names "Wikipedia" and "Google" in their titles, to indicate that they somehow change the display of Wikipedia and Google, respectively, must also be running afoul of trademark law.

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

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.

I’m sure most people support your sentiments, but self-conciously shoe horning Niemöller & Orwell into your arguments like that comes across a bit over the top.

Tone it down, less preaching more conversational. You’ll get a better response and promote better discussions.

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

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."

Facebook asking someone not to infringe on their trademarks is like genocide? This is what you are standing by?

True, most organizations (and people) react badly if you disrupt their illusion of total control over things. On the other hand, the newspaper industry has been the most visible recent example of a complete failure to control, or even monetize, online assets. I generally get the feeling that it's more of a "let's see what we can do with this and get away with" kind of thing or a case of ruffled feathers than a direct attempt to squash individual freedoms. This is particularly so in Facebook's case, which you are certainly under no obligation to use for enjoyment of the broader internet.

Is this person spamming? Flamming? Being somehow inappropriate?

Guys, there is absolutely no reason that this comment should be at -4 (other than the caps at the end). Siculars is making a semi-valid point. Content publishes do want the internet to be static in the way that books are. They want you to go to facebook and see it exactly as they have laid it out and they want you to see it in this fashion because it is good for them.

Please, let's not try and suppress comments just because we don't agree with them. That's inappropriate and, really, pretty juvenile.

Sicular, you make a good point, but I probably would have left that adaptation of "First the came" off.

In addition, I think that 100% flash websites are becoming less common (the only one I can think of right now is grooveshark, and I'm not entirely sure that that is all flash). To me, the 100% flash stuff was all about "what you see is what you get", so seeing it go away is good :).

I think we might see a resurgence of this when the iPad starts gaining popularity. A lot of publishers are very intrigued by the idea of a static medium for their designers to work on. It should be interesting to watch.

While siculars makes a reasonable comment about authoritarian creep, I would argue that the discussion hasn't reached the required length for Godwin's law to kick in, and the comment might have better been kept for a little later. It's also true, as maukdaddy elegantly puts it, that supressing fb-purity is quite a long way from genocide.

The poem is about allowing incremental changes because they don't directly effect you; the poem itself has absolutely nothing to do with the Nazis or German intellectuals, or the genocide.

The poem uses what was currently happening around its author to demonstrate his point.

This is the essence of art.

Thank you, well said. To me, the poem is all about the slippery slope.

What was the conversation like before, during and after the DMCA went into effect?

Where is the outrage over the fact that nowadays you can't fast forward past certain parts of a dvd/bluray, no not the FBI warning, but the publishers advertising.

Maybe International Paper Co. owns my thoughts because I write them down on their paper. Maybe BiC does because I use their pens. Maybe Ford should get some of my paycheck because their car gets me to work. Obviously none of this is true or real but maybe it's neither because those companies don't have that kind of mechanism of control. There are so many potential ways to control the future of information it's scary when you stop to think about it. Heck, Disney controls Mickey Mouse decades after the original creators death. What is scarier here (unlike my examples) is a lot of this content is not even created by FB. It's user generated content!

All I'm sayin' is a few of these companies get together and fund a lobby or two, soon enough we've got all kinds of freedom curtailing laws and then it'll be... too late!

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

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.

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.

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.

Ok, that makes sense.

Some days my feed is filled with those kinds of status updates. (fans, friends, likes,...)

"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.

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.

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.

"all the apps" does include all these me-too apps that are born every week. I haven't seen sweepstakes, but I have seen many quizzes.

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