Facebook v. Power Ventures | Hacker News Reader

Facebook v. Power Ventures

niallkennedy.com

10 pointsbabyshake7 comments

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?

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

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.

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?

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?

Don't you know? It's okay when THEY do it. Just not when YOU do it.

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

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