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While the Iron is Hot
Scoble's scraping of FB to make a backup of his data (and that of his contacts) for his own personal use shouldn't be an issue. Unfortunately, too many sites such as Facebook want a lock on everything posted to their site. They haven't figured out yet that it's the people who use their site (and other like it) who can make or break them in the end.
Flickr went through a similar thing a year or so ago when they announced that as they'd been bought by Yahoo, Flickr users needed a Yahoo account to access their own photos. Photos were being used by Yahoo on their own sites without permission of the owners. Flickr/Yahoo claimed that by posting photos onto Flickr, even on a paid premium account, they had ownership of the photos. Lots of hollering. A bunch of people noisily left Flickr. In the end though... not much changed.
Meaning, getting his data isn't bad. Getting it in a way that rips it open might be.
Scoble has thousands of people on his list, I'm getting up there as well and it does scare me if one day Facebook decides to change their business model and all that data which I have created and worked to building is gone.
I think the end result of this is that lawyers for social networks will have to alter the terms of use and allow for users to take data off the site.
http://moneypowerwisdom.com/the-social-gene-poo...
All success
Dr.Mani
Morally speaking, anything that anyone creates is implicitly owned by them—and then you can start parsing the issues based on public domain, and other criteria variously dealt with by Creative Commons.
Technically speaking, that is from a nuts and bolts POV, agreeing to the TOS of pretty much any socnet site is going to surrender ownership of that particular data to the site owner. This is not to say that you’ve surrendered the content, just that SPECIFIC version of it.
Eventually we shouldn't be moving. We have our dat and we connect it with apps / services and if we choose we can disconnect again. And these services like facebook should comply to our TOC.
Thanks Robert for doing whatever you did. It gets the discussion going.
@Merlene - how can the Flickr own copyrighted material? Maybe they can use it, but own it?
And can I take the article and all the other comments as well?
Otherwise it's all out of context.
"Dear Facebook: good thinking! Piss off you most influential fan (@scobleizer). Good PR idea!"
Was more right.
I LOVE what Swisher wrote on this: http://is.gd/r2
"But Facebook’s disabling of his account yesterday–because he was apparently using a script to access and pull data from his own profile there to move it to other social graphs of his choice–is not going to turn out well for the social networking company."
"...And–let’s be honest–Facebook certainly doesn’t have any bullet-free feet to aim at"
ev & biz are organic gardeners. they have a flourishing ecosystem.
FB thinks it can nuke its fields with pesticides at the site of a bug.
i'd imagine he *was* going about the right thing the (maybe even slightly devious: "will i get caught?") wrong way. but it's still the right thing.
Swisher nailed it when she pointed out it's almost as if he went after their Achilles heel on purpose. even if he didn't mean to, defacto, he did it.
and guess who looks bad cuz of it? (hint: does not have the initials RS)
i'm really seeing this as a little civil disobedience to call them out an make a point. even if he didn't set out to make it that, there's value in that as a back story.
If I post a YouTube video on here, and that video is okay to share in some contexts, does it somehow take on the properties of the rights I describe in MY Creative Commons license? Hmm... Where's Colette Vogel?
More on the serious side, I think this will become more of an issue in '08.
Excellent post, Chris! Stay strong Robert!
Power to the People! ;-)
Facebook is following a pretty standard online strategy. The investment you put into making their service useful keeps you 'entangled' with their service. The effort in switching to a new service is too large to be worthwhile. It's like online banking -- once you have all your accounts set up and accessible from one place, why bother opening a new account at a rival bank?
So I'm not shocked that Facebook (or Flickr, etc) are taking this approach, but it doesn't mean we need to just accept it. Maybe this incident will give people pause about just jumping in to the next online community.
I hadn't heard of dataportability.org until Scoble's post this morning, but I've been starting to follow Doc Searl's VRM work. I'm used to using the term Vendor Relationship Management in a different context but it's all about people taking control of their own data and their relationship with companies, which is a good thing.
As an aside, maybe we need a standard "Terms of Service in Plain English." Most people never read the TOS and perhaps they are complex on purpose so that they *don't* get read.
Mark
Link to Project VRM: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/Main_Page
Facebook, MySpace and other social networking platforms are free service that allow you to connect to people, promote, discover new things you like, and find people with like interests. You are are going onto THEIR site, it isn't your site. The data that you provide, the contacts you make, are all housed on THEIR site. You run the risk of losing this data and having the data used for other purposes by signing up for THEIR site.
This social media movement where people complain that it is unfair or that your data is so valuable and they wouldn't have a site without it is so flawed. If you want the ability to connect, if you want to use their services, if you want to make a name for yourself on their networks abide by their terms of service and understand that you are just a number in their system.
Really it isn't that hard.
Some of us want to be able to download and save at least a copy of whatever content we share on services like utterz which includes audio and video clips along with photo's and text.
Obviously, we already have the media that we upload and share online, but not the audio recordings which is the point of contention for many who would like to be able to have that audio file for their podcasts or other reasons.
Yes, there are recorders that can capture any streaming media, but they can be expensive and perhaps too much trouble for the average user.
There should be a simple Save As...or Download button on any media we create for services. After all, we are the authors of the material. Shouldn't we at least have the option to save a copy of OUR data?
Pai
1) It's not like Facebook has suddenly changed the rules or some data policy. They've always been an information roach motel - this is nothing new. To now decide you don't like the TOS is fine but you can't slam the company because you no longer agree with their rules.
2) Yes Scoble's intended use was personal/not spammy but how is Facebook supposed to be able tell the difference??? At the end of the day Scoble tripped a system that was designed to PROTECT the user data from unwanted uses. If he'd scraped everything he could have easily posted "I just swiped all your data from Facebook & they did nothing"... and we'd all be off down a different privacy shit storm direction...
This is one of those cases where a company had a pretty clear TOS and they're well within their rights to invoke the "if you don't like it, leave" clause.
I think this is a moment, however, where people will consider HOW they use these systems, what they're using them for, and which systems make it easier or harder to extract the value and effort put into them.
Don't forget that LinkedIN allows you to port your contacts out of there lickity split easy. Why? Because LinkedIN knows the value is on-platform, and if you want to take your ball and go home, you'll only have a point in time capture of your information, and not nearly as much of the value.
Up until this moment, I bet you most folks haven't been particularly aware of what rights a social network has, what legal definitions they've put in place, and what matters to themselves as a user on these systems.
Personally, everything I put into Facebook, I consider theirs. I'm in their backyard. I'm adding to their value. And I get something back insofar as it's a directory where people can find me, and where my blog is reposted and spread to different users. If Facebook wants to own their instance of my text, that's one thing. If they intend to write books off it, and whatever, then we might have to talk about that.
And then here's something: what about the 3rd party apps I use to get my blog posted on my Facebook page. They are getting a copy of my posts, too. Do THEY think they own my blog posts, too? Not sure I've ever read a 3rd party app's TOS.
as a child I wanted to redraw the money I saved up as a kid and I had to pay a big sum of money to get my money. I felt cheated then and still do. They made money with my money already. I never banked with that bank again.
@kevin
It's a free service, but they are a company with aim to make money. And they do not by the service itself but by the people that use it. You should untangle the system from the data.
They make money the moment you start using it. You get a warm welcome why not a warm goodbye like "visit us again sometime!" Off course you can take the clothes with you you had on when you came in! (but all you talked about and made here are ours now).
I caught you & Scoble on Twitter and just followed your tinyurl here. I read your post and it hits the mark. Oh well. I guess I can't call it a right prediction if it starts to come true within 10 minutes, probably even before I made it. ~LOL~
They are going to make money from these numerous other users. The social web geeks of the world make up a small fraction of the users, when we talk about these sites that so often gets lost when we get on our high horses.
Chris- "I think this is a moment, however, where people will consider HOW they use these systems, what they’re using them for, and which systems make it easier or harder to extract the value and effort put into them."
What people Chris, a few thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand? What does that matter?
I think I found them all, but with a semi-final wave, they were waiting with my email address on the home page to re-sign me up if I ever want to reconsider my silly decision to break free of them.
Well, almost break free of them. Some may find this warm and friendly; I find it just plain creepy.
Facebook is a kid's game run by kids, they are not seasoned professionals ! I enter most of my data on Stumble Upon,Mahalo,
Lijit.Ma.nolia,Mixx.Connotea, Reddit, Technorati,et al Honestly I only used Facebook to pimp posts on my blog by others ! I don't see any content on f-book worth lifting ! Facebook and their Legal Eagles just may have them sleeping outside !
Facebook disabled our non-profit's account a month or so ago. We made the call early to sign up as a person and not as a group. Why? Basically because FB is really fricking clunky for non-profits. If you want to friend your newsletter suscribers en masse, then someone from our org has to friend them all first. It makes it really hard to differentiate your personal life from your work life.
Anyhoo, they let us know that this was a no-no and then cut us off without giving us the chance to inform all AIDG's current friends to follow our group, etc. Admittedly their support staff was really nice about the fact that they were giving us the axe, but it was a major headache coming as it did right b4 our Xmas push.
They didn't have a way to export that info to help us out so we're trying to refind friends. Grrr arrgggh.
I just feel that a big deal is being made over something really small. He violated the TOS, he got deleted. Trying to turn him into a martyr (I am not saying you are doing this but I have seen this today)for user data is a tad much.
you can't confuse effort with results ! Investor funds exist for profit they have no heart ! Scobie touched a nerve! Delisting a client is is a cover up to protect possibly another problem !
it seemed like an extreme response
but when you look at the rules
it was perfectly laid out
and followed up accordingly
when the taser boy got tased people rallied
freedom of speech etc they said
when really the two weren't related at all
you don't have freedom of speech across the board
nor do you own your data across the board
the boy got tased because he would not step down when told to do so
he broke the rules
Scoble got booted because *he* broke the rules
that's my thoughts on it right now
they change hourly :)
My take at
reachingforlucidity.net
Too much to type, my vid says what I have to say.
http://blog.soocial.com/2008/1/16/the-incentive...