I received this lovely letter from Facebook’s lawyers earlier today. The key points are transcribed below:
“Dear Mr. Finke:
I am writing you concerning the Firefox extensions you posted at:
These plug-ins are deeply concerning to Facebook because, among other things, they violate Facebook’s trademark rights, its Terms of Service, the security of the site and Facebook user privacy. For example, the facebook-image-to-email extensions permits people to circumvent Facebook security measures that protect user privacy and the scavenger extension allows people to harvest data off the site in contravention of the Terms of Service and also infringes upon user privacy. […]
I insist that you immediately take down the extensions listed above. […]
Sincerely,
Mark Howitson
Deputy General Counsel”
I was going to say isn’t that the second time they’ve asked.
I don’t see how Facebook Scavenger is harvesting date when it doesn’t do anything other than what the users can do themselves without any additional tools other than a web browser and a spreadsheet!
Hey Adam,
It’s the difference between being trivial and being difficult. Facebook wants it to be a huge pain to get data out of their site, despite their “support” of DataPortability.
I can understand that a user using this might violate some ToS – after all, they can put whatever bizarre crazy stuff they like in there – but I don’t see why the takedown request. Helping *other* people to violate ToS you didn’t sign up to yourself is not a crime, is it? I guess they don’t actually allege that you’re legally liable, they just imply it in a bullying way. IANAL.