EFF – Facebook Tries to Make Violations of Terms of Use Into Criminal Violations
I used to be afraid of Google. Now, I’m more afraid of Facebook.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is urging a federal judge to dismiss Facebook’s claims that criminal law is violated when its users opt for an add-on service that helps them aggregate their information from a variety of social networking sites.
In a lawsuit against Power Ventures, Facebook claims that Power’s tool violates criminal law because Facebook’s terms of service ban users from accessing their information through “automatic means.”
Accessing information through automatic means is nothing new. Google Reader aggregates feeds from different sites. Seesmic can aggregate your social information from Twitter and Facebook and put it all in one place. Using Facebook’s argument, using something like Seesmic would constitute a criminal violation.
Read more at EFF Seeks to Protect Innovation for Social Network Users | Electronic Frontier Foundation.
