8 ms·

It's Your Data, It's Your Bot: It's Not A Crime

178 points by there 16y ago

Aaronontheweb 16y ago
I normally like to play devil's advocate, but in this case I simply can't come up with a decent argument to justify Facebook's position that they "own" your data. They can own the expression of your data on a Facebook page, but they can't own the data itself. That's my understanding at least - am I in the wrong here?
- epochwolf 16y ago
  > That's my understanding at least - am I in the wrong here? You're wrong because Facebook has the money and will to sue you into poverty. :)
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    The Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules! :)
- mattmanser 16y ago
  One would hope not, but law and common sense can diverge. The devil's advocate argument is that you don't own the data, you uploaded it to Facebook to use in a limited capacity (e.g. they're not allowed to just broadcast it to the world without your permission or unless they trick you into exposing it with weird 'privacy' options). To use their service, which happens to use data you gave them willingly, you need to access their server in a manner they are happy with. And they are claiming that using a third party option to access it is forbidden. This is perfectly normal. In essence this is the EFF trying to establish some ground in a new field. It's nowhere near as cut and dry as they present it, you had the choice to never upload that data in the first place. It's not a safety deposit box where you own the contents, it's a online social site that you chose to use and provide some data in order to be able to use it. I've got no legal expertise, but that would be my first attempt as a devil's advocate.
  - chrischen 16y ago
    But if you don't access it in a manner they are happy with, and thus violate the agreement to use Facebook, then shouldn't Facebook then terminate the agreement and its obligation to service you (aka, delete your account)? Of course facebook does not want to do that, so it seems like using criminal law to enforce their will is a bit unfair.
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    It's not a safety deposit box where you own the contents, it's a online social site that you chose to use and provide some data in order to be able to use it. But the natural way people think about their personal information is that they own it. This needs to be codified into law. Perhaps activism along these lines is one of the most important things we should be doing as citizens of a digital age?
- repiret 16y ago
  Playing devil's advocate: This isn't about data ownership but about computer ownership. If you're going to access Facebook's servers, then you need to do so in a way that complies with Facebook's rules. Power Ventures ignored robots.txt, and circumvented an IP address block. In concept, this is no different than bypassing the password of a password protected web site. That said, I'm with the EFF on this one.
  - jasonlotito 16y ago
    While I understand you are playing devil's advocate, I think one problem they would have is that they'd have to prove that Power Ventures is doing this themselves, which they aren't. One argument could be that power ventures built the application, and users of Facebook are in fact utilizing the software to perform these actions. If Facebook were to approach anyone, it would be the users of the software. I think that argument holds as much water as Facebook's, if not more so.
  - ryoshu 16y ago
    I'm not sure why ignoring robots.txt or an IP block would violate criminal statutes. I'm not even sure why circumvention would violate civil statutes. Obeying robots.txt is common courtesy. For IP blocks /and/ people that ignore robots.txt, I have years of logs I'd like to turn over to the proper authorities.
  - modeless 16y ago
    Circumventing access controls should not be illegal. The DMCA has shown us why this is a bad idea. If circumventing access controls leads to a real crime, then prosecute that crime instead. For an analogy to the real world, think about lockpicking. Lockpicking should be legal. Picking locks isn't the real crime; it's theft, trespassing, destruction of property, etc. that we should prosecute. In this case users authorized Power Ventures to access their Facebook accounts (in exactly the same way users authorize Facebook to access their GMail/Hotmail/etc. accounts), so no actual crime was committed after circumventing the access controls.
- gojomo 16y ago
  That's not Facebook's argument. Their argument is that a contract exists with their user. In that contract, the user agreed not to use 'automated' means of access. Then, when the user has Power perform automated access, Facebook claims that a criminal law violation has occurred, because that's unauthorized access under their terms. They want that to be treated just like other California Penal Code unauthorized access -- access like exploiting a bug or stealing someone's password to view or change info never intended for you. EFF says only a contractual violation has occurred; violating some arbitrary company-chosen 'terms of use' shouldn't be enough to trigger criminal enforcement. It's an interesting and difficult distinction. So many of these systems and terms are defined by the arbitrary choices of coders and lawyers. At one level of abstraction, it's against the will of the system provider -- Facebook -- so it could be seen like a break-in. But at another level, it's just a contract, and Facebook has other contract-enforcement options short of criminal prosecution: cancel the account, sue for actual damages, and so forth. If Facebook can define what's a 'crime' via arbitrary clickthrough terms, suddenly users and Power staff could wind up in jail for a terms-of-use violation that had no other economic damages. So the issues are tricky, but important.
  - what 16y ago
    I don't understand this bit about automated access. Isn't anything using their "Open Graph" accessing it automatically then?
    - cookiecaper 16y ago
      The idea is that there is "unauthorized access" to Facebook's computers, that is, the user accessed Facebook's systems in some way that Facebook didn't like. Facebook wants absolute jurisdiction over who and what can see information stored on their servers and they want the civil justice system to enforce this will on their behalf after-the-fact. Under Facebook's claims, people could get arrested for something as small as using a browser or operating system that Facebook didn't like. If this idea is accepted, then Facebook can pretty much say anything and if you violate that thing and then access Facebook, Facebook would seek criminal penalties for your violation. For instance, if Facebook says "no person that doesn't own a pair of Nikes can access Facebook, under our new Nike sponsorship deal", and someone who doesn't own Nikes still accesses Facebook, Facebook would consider this "unauthorized access" and get mad. Or, if Facebook decides it doesn't like born in Florida, and they write "No one born in Florida may access Facebook", and you still access Facebook after being born in Florida, Facebook will try to get the police to come and arrest you. Open Graph API is not unauthorized access because Facebook allows people to use it.
- hooande 16y ago
  I would say that it ceased to be "your" data once you typed it into facebook. Common sense should say that anything you send to a remote server is no longer under your control. I don't understand what the other side of this issue is. If you keep data on your local machine and facebook comes and takes it from you, that's a problem. But if you voluntarily send it to them, then they're going to do whatever they want with it. How else would you expect it to work?
  - silentOpen 16y ago
    They control the data access but if they dump it to HTML and send it back to me then I can do whatever I want with that HTML. All we're asking is for symmetry. If I send them data, they can do whatever they want with it inside the law, their ToS and privacy policy. If they send me data (even the data I previously sent them), I can do whatever I want with it inside the law.
  - pyre 16y ago
    > I would say that it ceased to be "your" data once you > typed it into facebook. Common sense should say that > anything you send to a remote server is no longer under > your control. I don't understand what the other side > of this issue is. It is your data under the law. Sure you may have handed it to someone else, but to say it is no longer your data just because it was handed to Facebook is like saying that you no longer have a Social Security Number when you provide it on a form to a bank (for example) or that when you are the victim of identity theft that you literally no longer have an identity. Now, one should probably act as if handing their data to one person was like handing it to the world, but there are obviously limits. If I purchase hosting from a company and host my data 'myself,' does my data now belong to the hosting company? > If you keep data on your local machine and facebook comes > and takes it from you, that's a problem. But if you > voluntarily send it to them, then they're going to do > whatever they want with it. How else would you expect it > to work? The basis for your entire argument seems to be: "If you trust people, you shouldn't be surprised if they in turn stab you in the back." While possibly true, society would be non-functional if everyone were like that.
noonespecial 16y ago
So they expect what? A sort of proxy for the legislative process? Laws selected by the legislative branch of our representative government ooorr anything we happen to put in our TOS. Same diff.
riffer 16y ago
I can't believe that Facebook is attempting to go after people through criminal law, rather than civil law. Wasn't the CTO of Facebook just saying less than a week ago that : "users have complete control over their data, and as long as [the] user gives an application explicit consent, Facebook doesn't get in the way of the user using their data in your applications beyond basic protections like selling data to ad networks and other sleazy data collectors?" [1] I sure hope I'm missing something here. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1440154 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1440154
- calcnerd256 16y ago
  I'm guessing you're missing their definition of "application".
- motters 16y ago
  Facebook shouldn't be attempting to go after anybody, with any kind of law, if all they are doing is downloading their own data from the site.
DanielBMarkham 16y ago
So I'm an old guy who is hard of hearing and stubborn. But I'm also a programmer. Being who I am, I write a bot that scans my FB profile and checks for birthdays in the family. If one is approaching, it flashes a light, yells at me, and calls me names until I buy a present. According to FB, I'm a thief, no? What if I'm a blind guy who made his own browser-helper because the standard tools don't work so well for me? Or I wrote a special FB access device that helps people with ADHD? Or I just like the color blue and want to see everything in the world in blue? Or what if i just write my automation on top of a standard browser that highlights any text that has my friends' names and downloads the surrounding paragraph to my desktop. Just because? Seemed like fun? What if I filmed myself (or a trained monkey) accessing my Facebook account? What if I took the film and extracted data from it? I would argue that I am accessing FaceBook via HTTP and GET and POSTS. I use standard nomenclature and the standard stack from the O/S outward. Anything beyond that is none of their damn business. (Not trying to play to the crowd, but this is preposterous. The entire purpose of HTML is to separate the data from the way we access it)
- megablast 16y ago
  Yes, you are are a criminal (not necessarily a thief), according to facebooks terms of service. Of course, facebook would not prosecute you, but this is not the point. Facebook has been going after services that make it easier to delete your account, or move information to another service. This is what FB does not like. Of course, what they are doing is completely disgusting, but facebook seems to be able to do whatever they want, and their users do not mind, as long as they don't change the profile screen too much. Then there is an uproar.
  - joe_the_user 16y ago
    Uh, Have a look at the article... By the normal sense of the law up till now, you are not a criminal if one party in a contract considers you in violation of the contract. It has been a civil matter. Even the RIAA has had to sue people in civil court rather than being able to prosecute in criminal court. A criminal violates criminal law. Let's get clear on the concept, especial with Facebook trying to stretch it.
techiferous 16y ago
Please, somebody, create a facebook competitor! Don't wait for Diaspora; I don't think their idea will work for the average user. This market desperately needs competition!
- ars 16y ago
  Facebook only works because everyone is on the same site. A competitor would never gain enough traction to reach critical mass (defined as when the average person has an account on both) without some help from facebook in the form of a stupid business decision. Or if they managed to think of some killer feature. But simply a copy will never work. And BTW, the main reason you hate facebook is because they are big. So adding a competitor will not help you - eventually they will get big too, and you will hate them as well.
  - jimbokun 16y ago
    "So adding a competitor will not help you - eventually they will get big too, and you will hate them as well." Two big competitors are much better than just one.
    - whatusername 16y ago
      not in this case. (Not for the users) In one sense - facebook becomes a natural monopoly. Back in say 2007/8 I had to log in to both facebook and myspace to see what my friends were up to. Now I just have to use facebook. That is much simpler and easier for me as a user.
      - bcaulf 16y ago
        That is the way facebook wants it to be but that could change. For now, you must log on to their service, see their ads and be exposed to their new mesmerizing features in order to connect to your facebook friends. The goal of this lawsuit is for applications like Power to be allowed to let users not need to log on to the facebook website to do this.
      - 16y ago
jimbokun 16y ago
It is past time to start awarding prodigious damages against corporations who egregiously and willfully write unlawful provisions into their terms of use, consumer contracts, etc. etc. Parsing and correctly interpreting pages upon pages of legalese presents an undue burden on a well functioning market economy. Corporations can slip clauses into agreements that can give them vast power over their customers who do not understand the full ramifications of what they are agreeing to. There is very little cost involved to the corporation that tries to get away with this. There is a very great cost to our society in tying up our court systems with stupid crap such as this. The only solution is to make the cost of writing illegal provisions into contracts greater to the perpetrator than the potential reward. I know there will be unintended consequences to what I propose. But surely there must be a way to send a stronger signal to corporations who willfully push legal boundaries and seek to obfuscate exactly what it is that consumers are agreeing to?
- modeless 16y ago
  Unlawful provisions aren't the only problem; what about selective enforcement? When everyone is a lawbreaker selective enforcement gives law enforcement tremendous power beyond what's written in the law. A similar situation applies to contracts, and contracts for software and services are so impenetrable these days that you're bound to be violating something or other just in everyday use.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- motters 16y ago
  One relatively simple way to do this might be to pass legislation saying that the terms and conditions can only be up to a maximum number of words which must be from a standard dictionary, with no links or supplemental articles permitted. This would encourage companies to be concise with their ToS, and discourage the use of "hidden clauses".
  - motters 16y ago
wheaties 16y ago
Everyone keeps saying that Google will become the "evil next Microsoft." I'd argue that Facebook is racing to that department a whole lot faster.
stoney 16y ago
I guess that this relates in some way to cases where newspapers complain about companies like Google indexing their sites and effectively repackaging their news stories - and where violating terms of service (civil issue) crosses into unauthorised access (criminal issue). It all comes down to what precisely am I allowed to do with a publicly available web page? I'm allowed to use a web browser to access it (presumably), but when does something stop being a web browser and start being an automated tool? I'm not familiar with the tool in question here, but could it be argued that in some ways it's no different than a web browser that pre-fetches linked content?
ntoshev 16y ago
We're making a tool for scraping websites, http://siteparse.com http://siteparse.com As good web citizens we honor robots.txt, but these frivolous lawsuits make me think we shouldn't form a US corporation just to leave a much higher barrier to suing us. Which incidentally means no YC for us.
stcredzero 16y ago
How about a business opportunity? Modify an open source browser so that it lets someone navigate a website without being able to read anything on it or look at any pictures. Set up a Mechanical Turk style application that lets workers execute browsing sessions using the modified browser via VNC. The modified browser will save off all of the pages, which can then be parsed for information. The server will match up retrieved information with particular users. No worker will ever see any actual user data.
stcredzero 16y ago
Some outlaw hacker needs to make a name for him/herself by distributing a Facebook scraper desktop application that perfectly simulates user browsing.
joe_the_user 16y ago
I'm a gnu/eff booster most of the time. However, it's worth looking at more of the details here: http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2009/01/facebook-vs-power-ventures.html http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2009/01/facebook-vs-power-v... "Collecting Facebook usernames and passwords is at the heart of the dispute. Power.com impersonates a Facebook user after collecting their username and password." I would still side with power BUT a TOS that says "you can't give your password to third parties" is a bit different from "you can't use any automated processes at all".
- Joeboy 16y ago
  That's interesting, but: a) They are going after the third party, not the people that gave them their passwords, and b) I believe Facebook also harvest passwords for other sites (hotmail etc) c) In practice, there's not much difference between "Nobody can create a service that uses user's passwords to automate their Facebook access" and "You can't use any automated processes to access Facebook".
  - joe_the_user 16y ago
    Uh sht... I forgot the Facebook harvesting passwords thing... NOW that's rich... my qualms are gone....
adamc 16y ago
I need to give the EFF some money.

178 points by there 16y ago

I normally like to play devil's advocate, but in this case I simply can't come up with a decent argument to justify Facebook's position that they "own" your data. They can own the expression of your data on a Facebook page, but they can't own the data itself. That's my understanding at least - am I in the wrong here?

epochwolf 16y ago
> That's my understanding at least - am I in the wrong here? You're wrong because Facebook has the money and will to sue you into poverty. :)
- stcredzero 16y ago
  The Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules! :)
mattmanser 16y ago
One would hope not, but law and common sense can diverge. The devil's advocate argument is that you don't own the data, you uploaded it to Facebook to use in a limited capacity (e.g. they're not allowed to just broadcast it to the world without your permission or unless they trick you into exposing it with weird 'privacy' options). To use their service, which happens to use data you gave them willingly, you need to access their server in a manner they are happy with. And they are claiming that using a third party option to access it is forbidden. This is perfectly normal. In essence this is the EFF trying to establish some ground in a new field. It's nowhere near as cut and dry as they present it, you had the choice to never upload that data in the first place. It's not a safety deposit box where you own the contents, it's a online social site that you chose to use and provide some data in order to be able to use it. I've got no legal expertise, but that would be my first attempt as a devil's advocate.
- chrischen 16y ago
  But if you don't access it in a manner they are happy with, and thus violate the agreement to use Facebook, then shouldn't Facebook then terminate the agreement and its obligation to service you (aka, delete your account)? Of course facebook does not want to do that, so it seems like using criminal law to enforce their will is a bit unfair.
- stcredzero 16y ago
  It's not a safety deposit box where you own the contents, it's a online social site that you chose to use and provide some data in order to be able to use it. But the natural way people think about their personal information is that they own it. This needs to be codified into law. Perhaps activism along these lines is one of the most important things we should be doing as citizens of a digital age?
repiret 16y ago
Playing devil's advocate: This isn't about data ownership but about computer ownership. If you're going to access Facebook's servers, then you need to do so in a way that complies with Facebook's rules. Power Ventures ignored robots.txt, and circumvented an IP address block. In concept, this is no different than bypassing the password of a password protected web site. That said, I'm with the EFF on this one.
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  While I understand you are playing devil's advocate, I think one problem they would have is that they'd have to prove that Power Ventures is doing this themselves, which they aren't. One argument could be that power ventures built the application, and users of Facebook are in fact utilizing the software to perform these actions. If Facebook were to approach anyone, it would be the users of the software. I think that argument holds as much water as Facebook's, if not more so.
- ryoshu 16y ago
  I'm not sure why ignoring robots.txt or an IP block would violate criminal statutes. I'm not even sure why circumvention would violate civil statutes. Obeying robots.txt is common courtesy. For IP blocks /and/ people that ignore robots.txt, I have years of logs I'd like to turn over to the proper authorities.
- modeless 16y ago
  Circumventing access controls should not be illegal. The DMCA has shown us why this is a bad idea. If circumventing access controls leads to a real crime, then prosecute that crime instead. For an analogy to the real world, think about lockpicking. Lockpicking should be legal. Picking locks isn't the real crime; it's theft, trespassing, destruction of property, etc. that we should prosecute. In this case users authorized Power Ventures to access their Facebook accounts (in exactly the same way users authorize Facebook to access their GMail/Hotmail/etc. accounts), so no actual crime was committed after circumventing the access controls.
gojomo 16y ago
That's not Facebook's argument. Their argument is that a contract exists with their user. In that contract, the user agreed not to use 'automated' means of access. Then, when the user has Power perform automated access, Facebook claims that a criminal law violation has occurred, because that's unauthorized access under their terms. They want that to be treated just like other California Penal Code unauthorized access -- access like exploiting a bug or stealing someone's password to view or change info never intended for you. EFF says only a contractual violation has occurred; violating some arbitrary company-chosen 'terms of use' shouldn't be enough to trigger criminal enforcement. It's an interesting and difficult distinction. So many of these systems and terms are defined by the arbitrary choices of coders and lawyers. At one level of abstraction, it's against the will of the system provider -- Facebook -- so it could be seen like a break-in. But at another level, it's just a contract, and Facebook has other contract-enforcement options short of criminal prosecution: cancel the account, sue for actual damages, and so forth. If Facebook can define what's a 'crime' via arbitrary clickthrough terms, suddenly users and Power staff could wind up in jail for a terms-of-use violation that had no other economic damages. So the issues are tricky, but important.
- what 16y ago
  I don't understand this bit about automated access. Isn't anything using their "Open Graph" accessing it automatically then?
  - cookiecaper 16y ago
    The idea is that there is "unauthorized access" to Facebook's computers, that is, the user accessed Facebook's systems in some way that Facebook didn't like. Facebook wants absolute jurisdiction over who and what can see information stored on their servers and they want the civil justice system to enforce this will on their behalf after-the-fact. Under Facebook's claims, people could get arrested for something as small as using a browser or operating system that Facebook didn't like. If this idea is accepted, then Facebook can pretty much say anything and if you violate that thing and then access Facebook, Facebook would seek criminal penalties for your violation. For instance, if Facebook says "no person that doesn't own a pair of Nikes can access Facebook, under our new Nike sponsorship deal", and someone who doesn't own Nikes still accesses Facebook, Facebook would consider this "unauthorized access" and get mad. Or, if Facebook decides it doesn't like born in Florida, and they write "No one born in Florida may access Facebook", and you still access Facebook after being born in Florida, Facebook will try to get the police to come and arrest you. Open Graph API is not unauthorized access because Facebook allows people to use it.
hooande 16y ago
I would say that it ceased to be "your" data once you typed it into facebook. Common sense should say that anything you send to a remote server is no longer under your control. I don't understand what the other side of this issue is. If you keep data on your local machine and facebook comes and takes it from you, that's a problem. But if you voluntarily send it to them, then they're going to do whatever they want with it. How else would you expect it to work?
- silentOpen 16y ago
  They control the data access but if they dump it to HTML and send it back to me then I can do whatever I want with that HTML. All we're asking is for symmetry. If I send them data, they can do whatever they want with it inside the law, their ToS and privacy policy. If they send me data (even the data I previously sent them), I can do whatever I want with it inside the law.
- pyre 16y ago
  > I would say that it ceased to be "your" data once you > typed it into facebook. Common sense should say that > anything you send to a remote server is no longer under > your control. I don't understand what the other side > of this issue is. It is your data under the law. Sure you may have handed it to someone else, but to say it is no longer your data just because it was handed to Facebook is like saying that you no longer have a Social Security Number when you provide it on a form to a bank (for example) or that when you are the victim of identity theft that you literally no longer have an identity. Now, one should probably act as if handing their data to one person was like handing it to the world, but there are obviously limits. If I purchase hosting from a company and host my data 'myself,' does my data now belong to the hosting company? > If you keep data on your local machine and facebook comes > and takes it from you, that's a problem. But if you > voluntarily send it to them, then they're going to do > whatever they want with it. How else would you expect it > to work? The basis for your entire argument seems to be: "If you trust people, you shouldn't be surprised if they in turn stab you in the back." While possibly true, society would be non-functional if everyone were like that.

noonespecial 16y ago

So they expect what? A sort of proxy for the legislative process? Laws selected by the legislative branch of our representative government ooorr anything we happen to put in our TOS. Same diff.

riffer 16y ago

I can't believe that Facebook is attempting to go after people through criminal law, rather than civil law. Wasn't the CTO of Facebook just saying less than a week ago that : "users have complete control over their data, and as long as [the] user gives an application explicit consent, Facebook doesn't get in the way of the user using their data in your applications beyond basic protections like selling data to ad networks and other sleazy data collectors?" [1] I sure hope I'm missing something here. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1440154 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1440154

calcnerd256 16y ago
I'm guessing you're missing their definition of "application".
motters 16y ago
Facebook shouldn't be attempting to go after anybody, with any kind of law, if all they are doing is downloading their own data from the site.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

So I'm an old guy who is hard of hearing and stubborn. But I'm also a programmer. Being who I am, I write a bot that scans my FB profile and checks for birthdays in the family. If one is approaching, it flashes a light, yells at me, and calls me names until I buy a present. According to FB, I'm a thief, no? What if I'm a blind guy who made his own browser-helper because the standard tools don't work so well for me? Or I wrote a special FB access device that helps people with ADHD? Or I just like the color blue and want to see everything in the world in blue? Or what if i just write my automation on top of a standard browser that highlights any text that has my friends' names and downloads the surrounding paragraph to my desktop. Just because? Seemed like fun? What if I filmed myself (or a trained monkey) accessing my Facebook account? What if I took the film and extracted data from it? I would argue that I am accessing FaceBook via HTTP and GET and POSTS. I use standard nomenclature and the standard stack from the O/S outward. Anything beyond that is none of their damn business. (Not trying to play to the crowd, but this is preposterous. The entire purpose of HTML is to separate the data from the way we access it)

megablast 16y ago
Yes, you are are a criminal (not necessarily a thief), according to facebooks terms of service. Of course, facebook would not prosecute you, but this is not the point. Facebook has been going after services that make it easier to delete your account, or move information to another service. This is what FB does not like. Of course, what they are doing is completely disgusting, but facebook seems to be able to do whatever they want, and their users do not mind, as long as they don't change the profile screen too much. Then there is an uproar.
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  Uh, Have a look at the article... By the normal sense of the law up till now, you are not a criminal if one party in a contract considers you in violation of the contract. It has been a civil matter. Even the RIAA has had to sue people in civil court rather than being able to prosecute in criminal court. A criminal violates criminal law. Let's get clear on the concept, especial with Facebook trying to stretch it.

techiferous 16y ago

Please, somebody, create a facebook competitor! Don't wait for Diaspora; I don't think their idea will work for the average user. This market desperately needs competition!

ars 16y ago
Facebook only works because everyone is on the same site. A competitor would never gain enough traction to reach critical mass (defined as when the average person has an account on both) without some help from facebook in the form of a stupid business decision. Or if they managed to think of some killer feature. But simply a copy will never work. And BTW, the main reason you hate facebook is because they are big. So adding a competitor will not help you - eventually they will get big too, and you will hate them as well.
- jimbokun 16y ago
  "So adding a competitor will not help you - eventually they will get big too, and you will hate them as well." Two big competitors are much better than just one.
  - whatusername 16y ago
    not in this case. (Not for the users) In one sense - facebook becomes a natural monopoly. Back in say 2007/8 I had to log in to both facebook and myspace to see what my friends were up to. Now I just have to use facebook. That is much simpler and easier for me as a user.
    - bcaulf 16y ago
      That is the way facebook wants it to be but that could change. For now, you must log on to their service, see their ads and be exposed to their new mesmerizing features in order to connect to your facebook friends. The goal of this lawsuit is for applications like Power to be allowed to let users not need to log on to the facebook website to do this.
    - 16y ago

jimbokun 16y ago

It is past time to start awarding prodigious damages against corporations who egregiously and willfully write unlawful provisions into their terms of use, consumer contracts, etc. etc. Parsing and correctly interpreting pages upon pages of legalese presents an undue burden on a well functioning market economy. Corporations can slip clauses into agreements that can give them vast power over their customers who do not understand the full ramifications of what they are agreeing to. There is very little cost involved to the corporation that tries to get away with this. There is a very great cost to our society in tying up our court systems with stupid crap such as this. The only solution is to make the cost of writing illegal provisions into contracts greater to the perpetrator than the potential reward. I know there will be unintended consequences to what I propose. But surely there must be a way to send a stronger signal to corporations who willfully push legal boundaries and seek to obfuscate exactly what it is that consumers are agreeing to?

modeless 16y ago
Unlawful provisions aren't the only problem; what about selective enforcement? When everyone is a lawbreaker selective enforcement gives law enforcement tremendous power beyond what's written in the law. A similar situation applies to contracts, and contracts for software and services are so impenetrable these days that you're bound to be violating something or other just in everyday use.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
motters 16y ago
One relatively simple way to do this might be to pass legislation saying that the terms and conditions can only be up to a maximum number of words which must be from a standard dictionary, with no links or supplemental articles permitted. This would encourage companies to be concise with their ToS, and discourage the use of "hidden clauses".
- motters 16y ago

wheaties 16y ago

Everyone keeps saying that Google will become the "evil next Microsoft." I'd argue that Facebook is racing to that department a whole lot faster.

stoney 16y ago

I guess that this relates in some way to cases where newspapers complain about companies like Google indexing their sites and effectively repackaging their news stories - and where violating terms of service (civil issue) crosses into unauthorised access (criminal issue). It all comes down to what precisely am I allowed to do with a publicly available web page? I'm allowed to use a web browser to access it (presumably), but when does something stop being a web browser and start being an automated tool? I'm not familiar with the tool in question here, but could it be argued that in some ways it's no different than a web browser that pre-fetches linked content?

ntoshev 16y ago

We're making a tool for scraping websites, http://siteparse.com http://siteparse.com As good web citizens we honor robots.txt, but these frivolous lawsuits make me think we shouldn't form a US corporation just to leave a much higher barrier to suing us. Which incidentally means no YC for us.

stcredzero 16y ago

How about a business opportunity? Modify an open source browser so that it lets someone navigate a website without being able to read anything on it or look at any pictures. Set up a Mechanical Turk style application that lets workers execute browsing sessions using the modified browser via VNC. The modified browser will save off all of the pages, which can then be parsed for information. The server will match up retrieved information with particular users. No worker will ever see any actual user data.

stcredzero 16y ago

Some outlaw hacker needs to make a name for him/herself by distributing a Facebook scraper desktop application that perfectly simulates user browsing.

joe_the_user 16y ago

I'm a gnu/eff booster most of the time. However, it's worth looking at more of the details here: http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2009/01/facebook-vs-power-ventures.html http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2009/01/facebook-vs-power-v... "Collecting Facebook usernames and passwords is at the heart of the dispute. Power.com impersonates a Facebook user after collecting their username and password." I would still side with power BUT a TOS that says "you can't give your password to third parties" is a bit different from "you can't use any automated processes at all".

Joeboy 16y ago
That's interesting, but: a) They are going after the third party, not the people that gave them their passwords, and b) I believe Facebook also harvest passwords for other sites (hotmail etc) c) In practice, there's not much difference between "Nobody can create a service that uses user's passwords to automate their Facebook access" and "You can't use any automated processes to access Facebook".
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  Uh sht... I forgot the Facebook harvesting passwords thing... NOW that's rich... my qualms are gone....

adamc 16y ago

I need to give the EFF some money.