Cross Facebook, Go To Jail
Show your support:
The folks at Facebook, whose motto seems to be "as evil as we wanna be," now want to turn civil disputes into criminal ones. As
EFF reports:
Facebook claims that Power [Ventures] breaks California criminal law by offering users a tool that aggregates their own information across several social networking sites. ...
This is not an esoteric business issue, because the legal theories Facebook is pushing forward would make it a crime not to comply with terms of service. (Emphasis added.)
You read that right: Facebook thinks it should be a criminal act to violate a contract. Or their contract, at least. And they want to use the full criminal enforcement power of the state against their users. Again quoting EFF:
Using criminal law to enforce private website operators' terms of use puts immense coercive power behind measures that may be contrary to the interests of consumers and the public.
And still more:
Another wrinkle in the case is Facebook's attempt to interfere with uses of the Power service through IP address blocking. In response to the block, Power simply changed its IP address so it could continue to provide its service. ... Yet, remarkably, Facebook claims that Power's IP address change is also a violation of the law.
My read on this: if you've ever used an anonymizer for web surfing, and you use it to visit your Facebook account, you're probably violating Facebook's
ever-changing terms of service. For which Facebook wants to throw you into the slammer.
If you value your privacy -- or your rights -- stay the hell away from Facebook.
Brad - Saturday 03 July 2010 - 13:35:26 -
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