Facebook's legal team bans developer of F.B. Purity from Facebook
fbpurity.com
fbpurity.com
If I were Facebook and I really didn't want this extension or others like it to stay afloat, my approach would be simple... hire one guy whose only job is to monitor new releases of these extensions, and then make minor structural changes to the Facebook site that break them as soon as they're out. Become the mouse in a game of cat and mouse. When the extension keeps breaking within a day or two of each release, users would get fed up and stop using it, the devs would get overwhelmed with bug reports and complaints, and they'd all die slow, quiet deaths.
Actually, there is. He's been informed by Facebook that they have revoked his right to use their site, which is their right. Any update that he issues to to the plugin would be solid evidence that he had been back on Facebook. In a US legal system that regularly bows to the will of large corporations, he could not only be sued, but also charged with a crime under the CFAA (unauthorized access) should he simply open another account.
I'd do it. FB Purity is the only thing keeping me on Facebook, so I have no qualms about risking my account for it. I'm gone as soon as it stops working anyway.
http://news.yahoo.com/security-experts-blast-ipad-hackers-ch...
[citation needed]
No, seriously, I'm having a hard time believing this.
Capitalism is not a force of nature. Countries have an enormous amount of legislation in place to ensure companies can do business, and invest huge amounts of money in services supporting the private sector (infrastructure, education, etc).
These companies wield a tremendous amount of social power, especially services like Facebook. There's nothing odd about holding these companies to certain standards and laws that ensure they can not negatively influence the civil society from which they profit so much. Being allowed to refuse service to the very people that enable your business to exist is a privilege, not a right, and it comes with restrictions.
This is quite normal in most countries outside the US.
That someone who owns a company does not have authority in who they will and will not do business with?
The OP claimed that that did not exist at all in Germany.
Whether alleged violation of the user term is a valid reason is open to questions. Without going to court, I strongly doubt it is.
Sure you have. It's called 'virtuelles Hausverbot' and heise.de makes heavy use of it for their forums.
Most prominent case: Guenther Freiherr v. Gravenreuth was legally banned from heise.de forums with this instrument.
Here's the german wikipedia article: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuelles_Hausverbot
The bans by Heise where not arbitrarily.
Maybe there wasn't one guy whose full time job was to break FB Purity, but it was definitely one of their goals.
There's one site I've scraped that has code like this: <div class="name"><span class="first_name">...</span> <span class="last_name">...</span></div><div class="street_address">...</div>
A CSS3 selector could easily just get this - in jQuery:
$('div span').attr('class')
will easily give you the expression that returns all the classnames - easily mapped to whatever output you want.
Are nations going to publish a list of 'good' words that we can't get sued for using, and name it 'neotalk'?
Now the morality of this behavior is an entirely different discussion...
(In essence, the argument is not a technical one: it is only interesting in that it changes the dynamics of "could someone have been confused"; if people see the word "Facebook" as a moniker on products all the time that are not made by Facebook, then clearly they are not going to be confused by any individual one.)
And basically, that's why most trademark lawyers will act on even the smallest unauthorized trademark use - they do not want to leave it to chance.
Of course, new chrome extensions can pop up faster than FB's legal department can respond, so the mere existence of other people that haven't been caught yet is not evidence of selective enforcement.
Obviously, their new attempt to undermine him uses a different angle, but you can't blame him for re-hashing his earlier woes.
[1] http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/23/patent-office-agrees-to-fac...
[2] http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/159628/teachbo...
Hmm, I wonder how people are going to refer to a casual, recurring sex partner now!
Facebook doesn't get to own the letters "FB", but they do get to own those letters in contexts where use of those letters would confuse people into thinking that the product in question comes from Facebook. Calling your new line of leaf blowers "FB" would probably be fine, but calling your browser extension specifically targeted at facebook.com "FB" is begging for trouble.
Here are those 8 factors for argument sake:
As an example of how wrong this argument path is: right now there is a trademark application published for opposition on the word "FACE", an acronym by the Florida Autism Charter School of Excellence, Inc.
They have been using this term since 2007, and I see no reason why they will not get their trademark filed, because it does not conflict with Facebook's usage, as you simply would not get these two usages confused.
In fact, these usages are encoded into the registrations themselves: you have to specify a class and define how you use the mark, and then that mark only exists within that limited area; you can stretch it some, but those stretches are all fairly common sense.
As an example: if you had a restaurant called Apple, it would matter severely how you rendered the Apple, what kinds of other imagery and colors you used, etc.; even though this was outside the scope of computers, you might still fall under their trademark.
But, they DO NOT "own the word Apple". To continue to make such claims demonstrates a severe lack of understanding of why trademarks exist and how they work, and doing so in this post is undermining and diverting from the real issues.
Do you know of cases where tarde marks that were considered parody were still ruled as illegal in the end?
Facebook would argue that the usage is piggy-backing on the goodwill in the name (as with the coffee shop example) but in this case, I think there is a very good reason why 'FB' is being utilised.
Personally speaking, I would argue this is why they are using other means to restrict the growth of the extension rather than using a more traditional cease and desist letter more geared to trade mark rights (at least as far as I'm aware).
Agreed. Trademark law seems to be aimed at preventing companies from pretending to be some other company. This clearly doesn't apply to generic names, like "Sofa Vacuum" or "Photocopier Repair". But Facebook is something that's become de facto ubiquitous, a service almost universally used in the US - more ubiquitous than many generic things.
Surely, then, in the case of companies that provide services that relate to Facebook, there's justification to make direct reference to FB in their names? The major consideration is whether there's much likelihood of these companies being mistaken for the original company - but a name like "Purity for Facebook" (or even "FB Purity") seems like it wouldn't be confused as being from Facebook itself.
Companies are obliged to defend their trademarks, but I hope sanity prevails in the courts, and people get to call their applications "Windows RegistryMaster" or "Mac Backpack" or anything else that isn't confusing or misleading. I'm probably underestimating how messy it'll be to sort out justified (descriptive) usages from the ones that are just piggybacking, though.
He could describe the product as something that purifies Facebook, but that's much different from actually naming the product "FB Purify."
Even better, try pasting
javascript:alert('hi');
I'm pretty sure Facebook crossed that line a long time ago.
Will the developers of all the AdBlock variants need to worry about their accounts being blocked as well (as they surely are against Facebook's terms of service as well)?
If you meant to assert that they shouldn't be allowed to: why not? It's their website, and their TOS that's being ignored. They have every right to.
So why is it one rule for this guy and another rule for AdBlock (or any other extension)?
I run AdBlock, and was shocked to see the amount of adverts on "normal" computers, truly shocking. Does that mean you should ban my account? They have a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/adblockplus
Maybe Google should stop offering AdBlock as a Chrome extension, given that advertising is a huge chunk of their business?
You are able to achieve a similar Greasemonkey Firefox plugin. You just need to find the correct scripts... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/
The guy should just open source it, let's see Facebook try and keep up with that one.
I wonder if an article about some scandalous escapades of Facebook high-ups would be similarly censored.
How is that different from creating your own browser that render sites however you want? Is Facebook going to try & sue Google when there is a rendering bug in Chrome? Will Facebook sue Userextensions.org?
Would Facebook sue someone whose viewing condition alters the way it appears also?
the ToS is between a facebook user and facebook, not the author of the extension and facebook. In fact, the author has no obligation whatsoever with facebook. If facebook does not like their site messsed with, they could detect and block this extension like how some sites block users with adblock running.
Meanwhile, yes, the TOS is between the user and the site. If Facebook wants to fight its users and say "if you don't send HTTP requests for our ad images, we'll stop answering your HTTP requests for our HTML pages," that's up to them.
I do think we need to push back whenever companies assert a right to control how a user views their site. That is fundamentally not how the web works. Every resource my browser requests, it requests by my implicit command to do so. Nobody has the right to tell me what to request; they only have a right to decide how they'll respond to my requests.
It doesn't make it right, but it does point out that future FB-extension developers should be cautious about connecting their FB account to their extension.
Why not, y'know, just not use Facebook? Are we complicating this issue just to have a discussion? The solution is really simple, yet there seems to be tunnel vision when it comes to thinking of it.
perhaps those people need to pay more attention to you, instead of to your facebook status and/or wall. Real friends sms or call once in a while.
It isn't evolving "independently" - its just the sum of the actions of everyone. So, to dicate it, you can attemot to convince your friends of the benefits of moving off it. If it is true that there is benefit form moving off, then it will happen eventually.
...oh except of course, if you get locked in, as designed.
So instead of telling people to take it, do like or predecessors and fight back. I'm pretty sure if this was back in the Ma Bell days, you'd be telling the crowd that 'Real Friends' send letters via post!
When you become a squeaky wheel by demanding special treatment, you don't always get the oil - sometimes you get taken off and left in a ditch.
Technology changes. Preferences vary. Declaring your friends inadequate based on chosen mode of communication is ridiculous.
Between TV, magazines, in-game advertising, billboards, and now airport screening trays, the ad overload finally became more than I was willing to tolerate.
The whole point of the WWW is that you must not rely on your user having a particular browser. Or operating system. Or display resolution. Or a display at all. You serve valid stuff and allow the client to parse it how they like. You can suggest nice font sizes and good contrast colours, but if they want to view it at 72 pt in pink on yellow they can.
Lots of the WWW ignores the fact that people may be using different screens or different whatever to view the content. Luckily we're moving away from fixed font sizes and a little fixed width blob of content in the middle of an otherwise white screen, but there are still weird lock ins around.
And Facebook are just following this trend - "this is our content, and it's our service, and you'll view it how we want you to".
Your wider point is a good one though. If people are annoyed at ads they should stop visiting the site serving those ads, with maybe a polite email explaining why they're not going to visit again.
If people are annoyed at ads they should stop visiting ad servers. Hence, AdBlock and Ghostery.
No, it is not a direct payment. Yes, it is a transaction.
Yes, there are ways to get around Facebook's ad serving and use the service "for free", in that sense.
Is it possible? Sure.. Is it legal? Probably.. Is it the right thing to do? Probably not..
If you object to the ads being served to you on Facebook, you should probably not use the service at all..
It's more like I want to go to the store, so I invite the store to send me a driver who will use my car to drive me to the store. The store accepts my invitation, but when the driver shows up he wants to invite a bunch of hitchhikers into my car but I politely decline. Meanwhile, I'm driven to the store.
Your bus analogy assumes that Facebook owns and operates my browser. That is incorrect.
But like I said. Analogies get really dumb when you get too deeply into them.
>> Man, this really blows. FB Purity helps me, a blind user, actually use Facebook more effectively than without it. sighs I do hope you continue to fight the power.
Is it OK for a user agent, running on my hardware, to alter the way content is displayed? Can the FB TOS actually be binding when it restricts your ability to do this?
The snarky knee-jerk answer is, why not throw away my cellphone and cancel my contract with the ISP while I'm at it? They also do things I disagree with.
The longer answer is that Facebook is how most of my friends communicate now, and how they schedule social events. I could delete my account, but it would mean a lot more friction when trying to talk to people, planning events, and attending events planned by others.
The truth is this is something no website can control. If I want to view FB via a local proxy on my device that filters out commercial garbage, I can do so. And I can show any of my friends how to do the same. A little tcpserver, tcpclient and sed and we can clean things up quite nicely, with minimal fuss.
These attempts to control how someone views a website (e.g. see Twitter's recent efforts) are futile. This is digital, not print. A social website is mainly just text (html) and various resource files (e.g. images), it is all malleable in digital form and there are myriad ways to process it and render it, of which the Facebook developers' choice or a popular web browser developers' choice are only a few.
You have to wonder if FB's legal team even understands what is technically feasible and what isn't (like controlling how a page is viewed, on the client side).
Trademarks are (as I understand it) a way to stop other from trading as you in some way. You can't pretend to be facebook, affiliated with facebook or use a name/symbol that makes it easy to get confused.
OTOH, if your product relates to another (Companion to "Fundamentals Of Microbiology by James O'Leary" by Timothy Goldman), is that not allowed? Companies can be called "Help with Windows" can't they?
What are the actual rules?
In the same way as patents are a way to encourage innovation. In the hands of corporate lawyers both turn into means to turn others' lives harder.
To look at your examples, however: the usage of prepositions changes things drastically. Can you imagine Microsoft creating a new product, "Microsoft Essentials"? If you saw that book, would you at least momentarily, wonder if it was a first-party product (book, software, whatever) from Microsoft? I am not certain about you, but that sounds like it could be them. However, if I saw "Essentials of Microsoft", I am pretty certain I wouldn't jump there: I would think that this is something describing Microsoft, not something built by Microsoft.
(edit: I thought I made that example up, but I then did a search for it after posting my comment, and it turns out that, in fact, that is so much the kind of thing that Microsoft would do that they pretty much have, with "Windows Live Essentials", "Windows Essentials", and "Microsoft Security Essentials", all being terms they've used. Yet, even with all of those usages, "Essentials of Microsoft" sounds more like a documentary or description than something they would have made themselves.)
This gets exceptionally bad with little tags like Apple's "i"; the "i" is so overwhelmingly "Apple's thing" that if I saw an app on someone's phone called "iVideo" I can't imagine not thinking "wow, Apple made a video service?", and when people choose a name like that, it is because they know what the "i" means to people, and they want to look "more official" and "more like Apple", which even if the intention is not "I want them to think I am Apple" is still in the bad zone.
Regardless, the core issue here isn't even this trademark problem, and that should probably have just been left at "we agreed this was fine, and now they are changing their minds". The more serious issue here is whether Facebook should be able to ban a user for building a product they don't like and whether building it, using it, or both are legally grounded.
iGoogle (Wow, Apple made a Google service?) iRobot (iRobot Roomba, etc. - 1990) iBrowse (Amiga browser, 1996) iPlayer (BBC) iVideo (http://www.ivideoapp.com/)
A little googling (heh) will find lots more.
Trademarks need to be chosen from non-generic words and symbols, or must be qualified by a non-generic name (e.g., "Microsoft Windows" vs. "X/Windows").
Allowing one company to co-opt a letter of the alphabet pollutes the global namespace far too much.
In this case, the "i" is a great example because it is clear that Apple does not own the "i". They do, however, on their devices, use that all over the place for their things, and if users saw it in that context it invokes "oh, this is Apple's service".
Therefore, in the restricted context of Apple's device they have a pretty good claim that if there is an "i" on something, there will be confusion. However, if listed on Google's website, or on a router, it wouldn't be; it is all about context.
"Allowing one company to co-opt a letter of the alphabet pollutes the global namespace far too much." <- This, thereby, is just a BS argument that you find on forums constantly that totally ignores how trademarks actually work.
In addition to the identifying function of trade marks, a trade mark owner can generally take action where someone is piggy-backing on the goodwill in a mark (for example a reasonable consumer wouldn't necessarily think 'Rolex Tractors' was related to the watch company as they're very different product fields, but Rolex would be able to argue unfair advantage is being taken of their mark) or is causing it detriment.
Hell, the idea is so tempting that someone is definitely doing this already. And you'd only need a percentile of the users to get the information for every other facebook user.
Other than that, i don't think Facebook has much legal ground if the facts presented in the blog post are everything to the story...
IANAL, of course
Yes there are cases of the "small man" being able to fight back and win. I doubt its par for the course and it's one of the severe drawbacks of our legal system in the US
I went to the EFF for advice mostly, did I need to comply with the takedown? Should I be concerned that I couldn't meet all of the ridiculous demands (they wanted personally identifying information about everyone who had downloaded the extension!). EFF's response? In summary "We're not sure on this one… But can we blog about it? This may or may not cause you more problems."
I didn't hear from them again after I asked them to keep it quiet for the time being.
That doesn’t meant that you can’t just not use Facebook. Social networks, in particular Facebook, have become a central part of social interaction. You can’t simply use another network, because they’re not interoperable. Your friends aren’t there, and you’ll be missing out.
Also, it is a bit ignorant and misplaced to suggest that slavery existed because people were just 'taking what they were given' and then link this to something as futile as a website.
I cant help thinking that as some point there needs to be an independent arbitration service that users or ex-users can appeal to in this sort of event, perhaps one a site's user base gets to a certain level. Other wise, how are facebook and co ever held to account in this respect? Can a Syrian protester sue facebook in Syria, or perhaps raise a fortune to sue in the US? How does it work?
It seems to me that a website can define the API by which you access their site (some subset of HTTP), but can they really make a definitive claim to how data is rendered on the client side once that data is fetched through legitimate targets?
Furthermore, take a look at this obnoxious Facebook page that I'm surprised hasn't been taken down yet: https://www.facebook.com/fluffbustingpurity
Isn't such heavy (and spammy, As-Seen-On-TV-Reminiscent) advertising about a product that flouts Facebook's functionalities on Facebook just playing with fire?
I installed this extension before, I didn't keep it because it didn't had an option to silence events notification, what I was looking for, but it didn't seem bad
He can simply continue his project in any way he likes. He doesnt need a facebook account to do so.
If he likes, he could also sue facebook for access. But as I said in another comment, I dont know US law enough to know if he would win.
As I understand it, he has a large userbase. So his project has a purpose. Just because its free, it doesnt mean its no good.
You have rushed to make assumptions and judgments here and then insulted the OP. I don't understand why you felt the need to make a personal attack. It's unwarranted. The OP had some nice, encouraging words for the FB Purity guy and then here you go making disparaging remarks.
Although you might not agree with his point, there's no need to say "Not true" and then insult him.
Surely the legal team would present a legal response, like a cease and desist?
That said, if nothing else there is a strong argument fair use argument for posting excerpts from the communications along with your rebuttals. It's not my money of course, so I understand the reluctance to do so.
As a commenter below said, you would be the one taking the risk, but it would add a huge amount to the credibility of your claim if you posted the legal notices.
I have not heard a peep from Facebook about it, although StatCounter tells me that at least someone there has seen it.
You lose either way. Either, you fight to keep your app, and you're helping a company that doesn't respect your contributions, or you give up, and you lose with less effort.
Lose the easy way. Make an app for someone who cares.
The content you're trying to link to is spammy or unsafe. If so, FB Purity is the best malware I've ever downloaded.
I'm so sick of this era of "Let's all build a service and lock users in" and it pains me every time YC picks another company whose future is "build a huge social base and then we'll figure out how to monetize it".