Power.com Says Facebook Can't Block Access To User Data
from the seems-like-a-tough-claim dept
Earlier this year, we had trouble understanding Facebook's reasoning for suing Power.com, a site that tried to aggregate a variety of social network sites into a single interface (something that seems rather useful). However, Facebook insisted that it violated its copyright, and in a slightly troubling ruling in the case, the judge seemed to find that any scraping could be copyright infringement, even if the scraping was just to get at non-infringing content. The court's argument was that in order to get at the non-infringing content, you first have to scrape the infringing content too.Now the case is getting odder, as Power.com has countersued Facebook, claiming that Facebook is "unlawfully withholding the data that users own (as stated in Facebook’s own ToS)." Of course, if that's true, I'm not sure if Power.com has the standing to make that claim. Wouldn't that be an issue for the user to raise themselves? Besides, I don't think there's any rule that even if a site lets you retain the copyright on content that it needs to make it easy to access. So now we have lawsuits coming from both sides that don't make much sense. The two sites should just learn to play nicely with each other.
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Filed Under: copyright, data, ownership, scraping
Companies: facebook, power
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Just snorted milk outta my nose!
other."
Priceless!!!!!
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No, they can't play nice
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Here today ...
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Thank you Facebook
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Re: Thank you Facebook
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It's an issue of facebook not giving Power.com a legal means of accessing user information on facebook. Power.com is basically arguing that to the extent they don't allow Power.com to legally obtain user data then facebook is liable.
"Wouldn't that be an issue for the user to raise themselves?"
Well, then all Power.com employees have to do is make a facebook account and then they become users. Now they have standing to sue.
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As if Power.com has any right
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