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Of course, Facebook wants to make it sound like scraping is illegal, when it generally isn't. But account hijacking and mass-creation of accounts just to acces
by fxtentacle 4y ago
Of course, Facebook wants to make it sound like scraping is illegal, when it generally isn't.
But account hijacking and mass-creation of accounts just to access private pages are clear violations of the Facebook and Instagram ToS, so they surely can sue for that.
- dementiapatien 4y agoSince when do you get sued for breaching TOS?
- thallium205 4y agoSince when do you get sued for breaching a contract? When the offense is worth it.
- curiousllama 4y agoSince you start a business on the violation. "Since when do I get sued for taking too many free samples from Costco?" -> "Since you started taking millions of them to resell"
- jhoelzel 4y agoim not sure on american law, but if you give me those samples willingly i can do whatever i want with them. Actually this is the reason why many products come with the lable "not for resale" but i have yet to find somebody who cares about it :D
- treis 4y ago>give me those samples willingly Doesn't seem like Facebook is giving them willingly.
- golemotron 4y agoYou can get sued for anything that causes harm. Relevant life lesson: don't do things to people with money that they might perceive as harm. Corollary: Being sued is as much punishment as losing a suit for most people.
- contravariant 4y agoI don't know but it's at least been that way since Aaron Swartz did it I suppose.
- Raed667 4y agoViolation of ToS does not mean a violation of the law.
- CoastalCoder 4y agoI don't think I know the answer, but I'm curious: Does violating a website's TOS meant your accessing it beyond your authority, making it a violation of the US's Computer Fraud and Abuse Act?
- zja 4y agoViolating TOS no; Gaining access beyond your authority maybe https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/07/court-violating-terms-service-not-crime-bypassing https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/07/court-violating-terms-...
- CoastalCoder 4y agoI was assuming that in this case, a person's authority was specifically granted by the ToS. I wondered if the interplay of those two concepts muddied the waters.
- danaris 4y agoI don't have a source for this, but my recollection is that this has been successfully argued by a couple of companies—but then an appeals court found very firmly that it was not the case. Essentially, having that be true would mean that any given website could create whole new classes of criminal behavior.
- zinekeller 4y ago> having that be true would mean that any given website could create whole new classes of criminal behavior. While this is true, reading the lawsuit it is clear that Meta is suing in civil court, so maybe they're trying to enforce their contract, especially their automated collection ToS (https://www.facebook.com/apps/site_scraping_tos_terms.php https://www.facebook.com/apps/site_scraping_tos_terms.php)?
- footlose_3815 4y ago[dead]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]