Facebook really couldn't have been more generous to this guy. He's really milking the free publicity, too, with all the talk of this being the end of the road (which clearly it won't be, since there's nothing to stop him from continuing work using an alternate account). I can't even imagine what Facebook was thinking, they must have known that attempting to shut this down would backfire.
If I were Facebook and I really didn't want this extension or others like it to stay afloat, my approach would be simple... hire one guy whose only job is to monitor new releases of these extensions, and then make minor structural changes to the Facebook site that break them as soon as they're out. Become the mouse in a game of cat and mouse. When the extension keeps breaking within a day or two of each release, users would get fed up and stop using it, the devs would get overwhelmed with bug reports and complaints, and they'd all die slow, quiet deaths.
"...there's nothing to stop him from continuing work using an alternate account..."
Actually, there is. He's been informed by Facebook that they have revoked his right to use their site, which is their right. Any update that he issues to to the plugin would be solid evidence that he had been back on Facebook. In a US legal system that regularly bows to the will of large corporations, he could not only be sued, but also charged with a crime under the CFAA (unauthorized access) should he simply open another account.
I don't see why other people can't test his software for him.
I'd do it. FB Purity is the only thing keeping me on Facebook, so I have no qualms about risking my account for it. I'm gone as soon as it stops working anyway.
He is being perfectly civil. He has succinctly stated a position that you find unpleasant, but that is all. It is not considered "civil" in the non-software world to suggest that someone should give away their possessions before you care about bad things happening to them.
If FB Purity is there for the good of humanity, great; open it up and let the community keep going. But why should I care if it's a primarily financial venture, and someone built their house on quicksand? Building a business on FB by removing new FB features is not bright.
But hes not building a business on FB, hes building a business on browsers to change the way they display FB. This reach alone makes me feel like you're being a bit unreasonable, and the open source demands kind of confirm it.
It was the snark and sarcasm that I was taking issue with. I don't have a strong opinion about the position itself. It's a good point cheapened by coarse delivery. We can do better here.
I don't use this extension, but I just looked at the xpi and crx versions and they are both just javascript, and I didn't find any license mentioned anywhere. So if you believe djb, you can distribute the source + patches until the author explicitly states otherwise.
To be clear, I wasn't suggesting anyone do anything. I was noting that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License-free_software is open to various interpretations regarding distribution of patches, etc (djb's interpretation being one example).
Im not sure about the law in the USA, but in Germany I would beg to differ. Here, if you run a service, you do NOT have the right to arbitrarily reject users. The bigger your userbase is, the less you have that right. So as long as the developer acts within the law, he could demand access to Facebook.
US courts have been very liberal in their interpretation of the CFAA. I strongly disagree with it, and I believe it is downright dangerous, but this is the current legal environment in the US. Perhaps he should move to Germany. Stuff like this probably wouldn't happen there either:
Can you cite/link the law that specifies a foreign company has to provide a service to a German citizen on demand even if that persons fails to comply with the ToS?
Capitalism is not a force of nature. Countries have an enormous amount of legislation in place to ensure companies can do business, and invest huge amounts of money in services supporting the private sector (infrastructure, education, etc).
These companies wield a tremendous amount of social power, especially services like Facebook. There's nothing odd about holding these companies to certain standards and laws that ensure they can not negatively influence the civil society from which they profit so much. Being allowed to refuse service to the very people that enable your business to exist is a privilege, not a right, and it comes with restrictions.
This is quite normal in most countries outside the US.
See Civil Rights Act of 1964. Many of the act's opponents were dyed-in-the-wool racists and bigots, and the rest of us can be glad that they lost. But there were some others who opposed the act because they understood that a slippery slope was being created.
Those are the limits most people are familiar with. They're reasonable and expected but even in the US businesses have 'the right to refuse service to anyone.' They work in the same way that you can fire someone, but you can't fire someone for being black, or a woman.
The OP claimed that that did not exist at all in Germany.
It certainly is illegal in France.
Refusing to sell without a valid reason is an exception to contract liberty since the sixties (article L. 122-1 du code de la consommation). The former situation was seen as biased in favor of the sellers.
Whether alleged violation of the user term is a valid reason is open to questions. Without going to court, I strongly doubt it is.
Have you read the article you link to? It explicitely says that you can NOT arbitrarily reject users. ("ein Hausverbot nicht willkürlich ausgeübt werden dürfe")
This is actually the solution Facebook has taken. I'm an avid FB Purity user and almost every single update is a workaround for minor code changes on the site that serve no purpose except to break FB Purity.
Maybe there wasn't one guy whose full time job was to break FB Purity, but it was definitely one of their goals.
As someone who's done a lot of data mining, I'm always surprised to find that sites with lots of data don't do this. Your output generator just needs to randomize some class names and throw a couple of pointless elements around the place to make it MUCH more difficult.
There's one site I've scraped that has code like this: <div class="name"><span class="first_name">...</span> <span class="last_name">...</span></div><div class="street_address">...</div>
I really wish this person, in the course of an otherwise sane argument (one that I feel for tremendously, as I have spent the last five years of my life organizing a community of people who do nothing but modify other peoples' software products, one that I always have felt has numerous analogies to what people do with GreaseMonkey scripts and browser extensions), didn't feel the need to play the "they don't own the letters FB" card... that is a ludicrous way of looking at trademark law (which involves a large dose of context sensitivity: if you are using FB for a coffee shop that is very different than an app that changes how people use a product that is often abbreviated FB). To then further claim that it stands for Fluff Busting and doesn't have anything to do with Facebook is just trying to play the audience for a fool: it doesn't matter what it "stands for", those letters would not have been chosen in this context had the name of the website been different.
He's referring to Facebook's previous attempt to take him down, which centred around a trademark claim against his use of the word "facebook". According to him, that dispute was resolved when he agreed to use only "FB".
Obviously, their new attempt to undermine him uses a different angle, but you can't blame him for re-hashing his earlier woes.
It is clear what he is referring to: it doesn't make the argument any better; his entire document, including the section regarding the prior and current dispute over trademarks, would be drastically improved by the removal of the paragraph where he complains about Facebook not having "a worldwide claim on the 2 consecutive letters FB" and how his usage is actually "short for Fluff Busting"; it demonstrates a severe misunderstanding of how trademarks work. :(
I think it's too bad that the top discussion on the entire issue is the silly argument about a trademark. But since that's the case, I don't see it as a misunderstanding of how trademarks work, but a perfect way of demonstrating how fatuous Facebook's trademark claims have become. After trademarks on the words face[1] and book[2] now they also claim to own the letters fb. How is that any different then someone trademarking socialmediawebsiteforumblogimagegallerynews.com™ and suing the Internet out of existence. Even WordPress suggests using wp in a domain[3] instead of the word wordpress. Facebook never had a problem with domains that used fb before, they're only complaining now as an excuse to shut down a service they don't Like™.
Trademark is fundamentally about consumer confusion. The whole point of even having trademarks is so that when I e.g. buy a fizzy drink labeled Coca-Cola, I can be reasonably assured that it was made by that company, and is not some knockoff. Similar or identical names can be used in different markets without trademark difficulty as long as there's no potential for confusion. Or such is my limited understanding.
Facebook doesn't get to own the letters "FB", but they do get to own those letters in contexts where use of those letters would confuse people into thinking that the product in question comes from Facebook. Calling your new line of leaf blowers "FB" would probably be fine, but calling your browser extension specifically targeted at facebook.com "FB" is begging for trouble.
There are actually eight different factors which the courts use as a "test" for infringement. Of those eight, I would say a majority fail the infringement test for Facebbook. Mainly because "FB" is not part of its primary trademark. Thus, the "FB" presents a weak case for the "Strength of the plaintiff's mark." element.
Your argument ignores the example, and continues to expose the same misunderstandings about trademarks that are popular on the Internet: trademarks have nothing to do with owning words or imagery, they have to do with context.
As an example of how wrong this argument path is: right now there is a trademark application published for opposition on the word "FACE", an acronym by the Florida Autism Charter School of Excellence, Inc.
They have been using this term since 2007, and I see no reason why they will not get their trademark filed, because it does not conflict with Facebook's usage, as you simply would not get these two usages confused.
In fact, these usages are encoded into the registrations themselves: you have to specify a class and define how you use the mark, and then that mark only exists within that limited area; you can stretch it some, but those stretches are all fairly common sense.
As an example: if you had a restaurant called Apple, it would matter severely how you rendered the Apple, what kinds of other imagery and colors you used, etc.; even though this was outside the scope of computers, you might still fall under their trademark.
But, they DO NOT "own the word Apple". To continue to make such claims demonstrates a severe lack of understanding of why trademarks exist and how they work, and doing so in this post is undermining and diverting from the real issues.
hi saurik, i am the fbp dev, thanks for the critique and advice, to be honest, i don't know much about trademark law, but then again i expect 99% of the population dont either.
It is not clear if you just see "fbpurity.com" that this is parody, so it would be difficult to make that claim for the domain name, which kind of needs to stand alone as it is rendered alone. I do agree, however, that this person is unlikely to fall into trademark straights on this name (I maintain it was just thrown into the list of complaints to make them longer and more imposing, which would then lead to longer trials and larger legal fees arguing if it ever came to that). The argument, however, was out of place.
I agree it is a weak argument but in any event I see the usage as legitimate in any event - as he is using the term 'FB' in a descriptive manner to help to describe the purpose of the product. There is nothing wrong with this in trade mark law generally provided in good faith (see nominative usage[0]).
Facebook would argue that the usage is piggy-backing on the goodwill in the name (as with the coffee shop example) but in this case, I think there is a very good reason why 'FB' is being utilised.
Personally speaking, I would argue this is why they are using other means to restrict the growth of the extension rather than using a more traditional cease and desist letter more geared to trade mark rights (at least as far as I'm aware).
> I see the usage as legitimate in any event - as he is using the term 'FB' in a descriptive manner to help to describe the purpose of the product. There is nothing wrong with this in trade mark law generally provided in good faith (see nominative usage[0]).
Agreed. Trademark law seems to be aimed at preventing companies from pretending to be some other company. This clearly doesn't apply to generic names, like "Sofa Vacuum" or "Photocopier Repair". But Facebook is something that's become de facto ubiquitous, a service almost universally used in the US - more ubiquitous than many generic things.
Surely, then, in the case of companies that provide services that relate to Facebook, there's justification to make direct reference to FB in their names? The major consideration is whether there's much likelihood of these companies being mistaken for the original company - but a name like "Purity for Facebook" (or even "FB Purity") seems like it wouldn't be confused as being from Facebook itself.
Companies are obliged to defend their trademarks, but I hope sanity prevails in the courts, and people get to call their applications "Windows RegistryMaster" or "Mac Backpack" or anything else that isn't confusing or misleading. I'm probably underestimating how messy it'll be to sort out justified (descriptive) usages from the ones that are just piggybacking, though.
Yeah, I don't think Facebook is crutching the trademark argument here at all: it is just thrown into the list of complaints to make them longer ;P. I additionally think that "F.B. Purity" could probably be defended (if not on "nominative use", then on how Facebook themselves largely prefers "f" to "FB" in their branding in addition to not capitalizing the B in general at all)... what I dislike is having that argument "they don't own the letters FB" thrown in there, as that isn't how trademark claims work. :(
Screw that bs. What, no one can use any NASDAQ stock name as a prefix, suffix or in the name at all? I can't publish a book or record a scene with 'google that' because Google wants to protect their brand?
Are nations going to publish a list of 'good' words that we can't get sued for using, and name it 'neotalk'?
Downvoted, because you're completely ignoring the point, which is that 'anyone' is allowed use the letters FB just fine, except for people that make an app that modifies Facebook or is similarly involved with Facebook. Just repeating your point of view doesn't engage the arguments levelled against you.
Shouldn't those other 20 developers using FB in their chrome extension on the chrome web store also get the same lawsuit? I feel like this developer might be singled out, since it directly reduces facebook's profits by removing sponsored stories, ads, etc.
Facebook has been contacting other developers. I know one of them. They aren't singling this guy out.
Of course, new chrome extensions can pop up faster than FB's legal department can respond, so the mere existence of other people that haven't been caught yet is not evidence of selective enforcement.
AFAIK, Facebook is legally entitled to being as inconsistent as they want to be, allowing companies they like to use 'FB', while suing companies they don't like. They are entitled to single out developers that encroach on their territory.
Now the morality of this behavior is an entirely different discussion...
FWIW, I believe that it is more "you can lose it if you lose control of it"; just because you haven't enforced it is not a big deal if the people you haven't enforced it against are sufficiently small that they wouldn't have been noticed in a wide enough audience to undermine your trademark.
(In essence, the argument is not a technical one: it is only interesting in that it changes the dynamics of "could someone have been confused"; if people see the word "Facebook" as a moniker on products all the time that are not made by Facebook, then clearly they are not going to be confused by any individual one.)
I sort of agree: You don't automatically lose anything. But once you sue to enforce your trademark, the court looks at the body of evidence - and may determine that the trademark has been diluted and has been lost. There is no AFAIK predefined threshold (or way to measure, for that matter) the dilution of trademark - a different judge/jury may reach different conclusions.
And basically, that's why most trademark lawyers will act on even the smallest unauthorized trademark use - they do not want to leave it to chance.
Trademark law is designed to protect customers, and is designed so if you see "Facebook" or "FB" in the context of a social network, that you know you're dealing with the same company.
Those changes were made for security, to make social engineering attacks more difficult. You can still type JS into the address bar, you just can't copy and paste it.
"...Facebook is blocking direct links to my site and libeling me by claiming the site is “Spammy and Unsafe...”. Does anyone else see a problem with this, or is this justified? It feels like Facebook has crossed a line from guardian to censor.
They shouldn't be allowed to ban a company from having an account on Facebook for a web extension?
Will the developers of all the AdBlock variants need to worry about their accounts being blocked as well (as they surely are against Facebook's terms of service as well)?
His point is that AdBlock to a certain extend does the same thing as this plugin. You don't want to see ads, great we'll remove them. It just doesn't go as far as this plug in does in removing inline adverts and re-organizing content, but that's because it a generic ad blocker and not Facebook specific.
So why is it one rule for this guy and another rule for AdBlock (or any other extension)?
I run AdBlock, and was shocked to see the amount of adverts on "normal" computers, truly shocking. Does that mean you should ban my account? They have a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/adblockplus
Maybe Google should stop offering AdBlock as a Chrome extension, given that advertising is a huge chunk of their business?
Wow, anyone notice that you cannot post a link on Facebook to the fbpurity.com domain (even if you shorten the URL). Facebook is blocking the posting of the URL as it is in their words 'spammy or unsafe'.
Wait, I don't get something: how can there be any legal ground for forbidding someone to create a plugin that changes Facebook appearance?
How is that different from creating your own browser that render sites however you want? Is Facebook going to try & sue Google when there is a rendering bug in Chrome? Will Facebook sue Userextensions.org?
Would Facebook sue someone whose viewing condition alters the way it appears also?
the ToS is between a facebook user and facebook, not the author of the extension and facebook. In fact, the author has no obligation whatsoever with facebook. If facebook does not like their site messsed with, they could detect and block this extension like how some sites block users with adblock running.
Yes. They can ban anyone they want. My question is how they know that Facebook user X and browser extension Y have any connection. If the extension's maker was marketing on Facebook, he should have expected this.
Meanwhile, yes, the TOS is between the user and the site. If Facebook wants to fight its users and say "if you don't send HTTP requests for our ad images, we'll stop answering your HTTP requests for our HTML pages," that's up to them.
I do think we need to push back whenever companies assert a right to control how a user views their site. That is fundamentally not how the web works. Every resource my browser requests, it requests by my implicit command to do so. Nobody has the right to tell me what to request; they only have a right to decide how they'll respond to my requests.
They made the connection because he was using Facebook itself to market his extension. I suspect that if he hadn't been doing that they would not have banned his account.
It doesn't make it right, but it does point out that future FB-extension developers should be cautious about connecting their FB account to their extension.
Yes, yet I don't see how they could have something in their ToS that says "you can't change the appearance of the website" since each user can see a website however he wants (Facebook does not describe the rendering of their site, only the markup of their site, it's up to the user..or it's own browser.. to interpret the markup in a rendering.. by cleverly omitting some divs & moving others somewhere else for instance!)
I don't think it's unreasonable to include, base on the assumption that they exercise it infrequently and with discretion. For instance, they probably wouldn't go after a blind user that uses some sort of auditory interface. Instead, they probably included it for situations like this, as a means to justify their actions.
I like the comments on that page. Various users complaining how evil and vile they find Facebook. I take it they are annoyed because they use Facebook and want to do client-side parsing.
Why not, y'know, just not use Facebook? Are we complicating this issue just to have a discussion? The solution is really simple, yet there seems to be tunnel vision when it comes to thinking of it.
In the past people would serve "stuff", and I'd have a client to receive that stuff.
The whole point of the WWW is that you must not rely on your user having a particular browser. Or operating system. Or display resolution. Or a display at all. You serve valid stuff and allow the client to parse it how they like. You can suggest nice font sizes and good contrast colours, but if they want to view it at 72 pt in pink on yellow they can.
Lots of the WWW ignores the fact that people may be using different screens or different whatever to view the content. Luckily we're moving away from fixed font sizes and a little fixed width blob of content in the middle of an otherwise white screen, but there are still weird lock ins around.
And Facebook are just following this trend - "this is our content, and it's our service, and you'll view it how we want you to".
Your wider point is a good one though. If people are annoyed at ads they should stop visiting the site serving those ads, with maybe a polite email explaining why they're not going to visit again.
>> Man, this really blows. FB Purity helps me, a blind user, actually use Facebook more effectively than without it. sighs I do hope you continue to fight the power.
I'm glad you raised this. To me, this case is most interesting not as a way to bash FB (I'm not a member), but as a conceptual marker:
Is it OK for a user agent, running on my hardware, to alter the way content is displayed? Can the FB TOS actually be binding when it restricts your ability to do this?
Sigh. You know full-well what I am talking about. Discussing it in terms of what is technically occurring does not achieve anything- Facebook is a service. The service is provided to you for free in return for showing you advertisements. If you block those advertisements then you are depriving Facebook of the means by which they pay for your presence on their service.
No, it is not a direct payment. Yes, it is a transaction.
Right, but it's worth pointing out that business models reliant on browser-requested ads are based on a faulty assumption that site owners control clients. Does Facebook's TOS include a statement to the effect of "the user must make a best effort to download all resources linked from each page"?
It's more like I want to go to the store, so I invite the store to send me a driver who will use my car to drive me to the store. The store accepts my invitation, but when the driver shows up he wants to invite a bunch of hitchhikers into my car but I politely decline. Meanwhile, I'm driven to the store.
Your bus analogy assumes that Facebook owns and operates my browser. That is incorrect.
These analogies are stupid, but in your example it's more like you invite the store to send a driver and they say "sure, he's going to bring five people with him", you say "OK, fine", then when he arrives you forcibly eject the five people you agreed to ride with.
But like I said. Analogies get really dumb when you get too deeply into them.
This isn't really relevant to Facebook. Facebook ads are pay-per-click. If you don't click FB ads, they don't make any money anyway. Also FB serves their own ads from their own servers, so you can't just block the ad servers.
The snarky knee-jerk answer is, why not throw away my cellphone and cancel my contract with the ISP while I'm at it? They also do things I disagree with.
The longer answer is that Facebook is how most of my friends communicate now, and how they schedule social events. I could delete my account, but it would mean a lot more friction when trying to talk to people, planning events, and attending events planned by others.
Not sure how helpful your comment is either. It would be like saying how evil and vile you find the US government, and your response would be to tell them to move to another country.
Facebook interoperates very poorly with other systems, and there are a lot of people who are using Facebook as their primary communication tool. If you don't use Facebook -- I, for example, don't use Facebook -- you are forced to keep reminding certain people that you exist and that you can be contacted by email / IM / phone / etc.
Nuh-uh! Real friends use a hand-forged knife to sharpen the point of a quill, which they dip in locally-sourced artisanal ink. Then they write you a thoughtful letter in beautiful calligraphy on home-made organic paper. After blotting it dry, they seal it with wax and hand it off to a messenger on horseback.
Technology changes. Preferences vary. Declaring your friends inadequate based on chosen mode of communication is ridiculous.
I got off of facebook a year ago and haven't looked back. I've actually been surprised at how little effect it's had on my life. The UX is only going to get worse as Zuck & Co. have to operate their newly-public company more in the interests of their investors than their users.
Between TV, magazines, in-game advertising, billboards, and now airport screening trays, the ad overload finally became more than I was willing to tolerate.
The problem that you are missing here is one of history. The phone company you so quickly push people to use has a long history of monopoly and abuse (at least where I'm from, where the telephone was invented). For the longest time you could only connect blessed telephone company equipment to your line, nothing else was allowed by law. It wasn't until people fought back that we could even use acoustic couplers. The telephone company was government sanctioned, but it was still a private company just like Facebook is.
So instead of telling people to take it, do like or predecessors and fight back. I'm pretty sure if this was back in the Ma Bell days, you'd be telling the crowd that 'Real Friends' send letters via post!
Unfortunately, social convention evolves independently rather than being dictated. If convention evolves in the direction of Facebook events and newsfeeds instead of mass SMS invitations and e-mail, one is forced to choose either to use Facebook or to become a social outcast.
did you ever think about whether facebook's marketing and influences have an effect on this evolution? Its not like "society" can think for itself - its just made up of people.
It isn't evolving "independently" - its just the sum of the actions of everyone. So, to dicate it, you can attemot to convince your friends of the benefits of moving off it. If it is true that there is benefit form moving off, then it will happen eventually.
...oh except of course, if you get locked in, as designed.
Facebook has no control over a user's browser. The most they can do is randomly ban users, like this guy.
The truth is this is something no website can control. If I want to view FB via a local proxy on my device that filters out commercial garbage, I can do so. And I can show any of my friends how to do the same. A little tcpserver, tcpclient and sed and we can clean things up quite nicely, with minimal fuss.
These attempts to control how someone views a website (e.g. see Twitter's recent efforts) are futile. This is digital, not print. A social website is mainly just text (html) and various resource files (e.g. images), it is all malleable in digital form and there are myriad ways to process it and render it, of which the Facebook developers' choice or a popular web browser developers' choice are only a few.
You have to wonder if FB's legal team even understands what is technically feasible and what isn't (like controlling how a page is viewed, on the client side).
Trademarks are (as I understand it) a way to stop other from trading as you in some way. You can't pretend to be facebook, affiliated with facebook or use a name/symbol that makes it easy to get confused.
OTOH, if your product relates to another (Companion to "Fundamentals Of Microbiology by James O'Leary" by Timothy Goldman), is that not allowed? Companies can be called "Help with Windows" can't they?
I am not certain there are, or even if there should be, steadfast rules: it largely comes down to whether there is a legitimate case for confusion. If you tried to prosecute this you would attempt to demonstrate cases where users were confused while potentially attempting to motivate that the name was chosen with at least some intention to confuse.
To look at your examples, however: the usage of prepositions changes things drastically. Can you imagine Microsoft creating a new product, "Microsoft Essentials"? If you saw that book, would you at least momentarily, wonder if it was a first-party product (book, software, whatever) from Microsoft? I am not certain about you, but that sounds like it could be them. However, if I saw "Essentials of Microsoft", I am pretty certain I wouldn't jump there: I would think that this is something describing Microsoft, not something built by Microsoft.
(edit: I thought I made that example up, but I then did a search for it after posting my comment, and it turns out that, in fact, that is so much the kind of thing that Microsoft would do that they pretty much have, with "Windows Live Essentials", "Windows Essentials", and "Microsoft Security Essentials", all being terms they've used. Yet, even with all of those usages, "Essentials of Microsoft" sounds more like a documentary or description than something they would have made themselves.)
This gets exceptionally bad with little tags like Apple's "i"; the "i" is so overwhelmingly "Apple's thing" that if I saw an app on someone's phone called "iVideo" I can't imagine not thinking "wow, Apple made a video service?", and when people choose a name like that, it is because they know what the "i" means to people, and they want to look "more official" and "more like Apple", which even if the intention is not "I want them to think I am Apple" is still in the bad zone.
Regardless, the core issue here isn't even this trademark problem, and that should probably have just been left at "we agreed this was fine, and now they are changing their minds". The more serious issue here is whether Facebook should be able to ban a user for building a product they don't like and whether building it, using it, or both are legally grounded.
iGoogle (Wow, Apple made a Google service?)
iRobot (iRobot Roomba, etc. - 1990)
iBrowse (Amiga browser, 1996)
iPlayer (BBC)
iVideo (http://www.ivideoapp.com/)
A little googling (heh) will find lots more.
Trademarks need to be chosen from non-generic words and symbols, or must be qualified by a non-generic name (e.g., "Microsoft Windows" vs. "X/Windows").
Allowing one company to co-opt a letter of the alphabet pollutes the global namespace far too much.
You seem to be making the same argument that I'm arguing against above (see the massive thread I started about OP's "own the letters FB" paragraph), which is that people use trademarks to "own" terms or letters or imagery.
In this case, the "i" is a great example because it is clear that Apple does not own the "i". They do, however, on their devices, use that all over the place for their things, and if users saw it in that context it invokes "oh, this is Apple's service".
Therefore, in the restricted context of Apple's device they have a pretty good claim that if there is an "i" on something, there will be confusion. However, if listed on Google's website, or on a router, it wouldn't be; it is all about context.
"Allowing one company to co-opt a letter of the alphabet pollutes the global namespace far too much." <- This, thereby, is just a BS argument that you find on forums constantly that totally ignores how trademarks actually work.
Usage of third party trade marks in a descriptive manner (including in the manner you reference) is generally permitted when in good faith. 'Nominative use' is how the term is referred to under US law.
In addition to the identifying function of trade marks, a trade mark owner can generally take action where someone is piggy-backing on the goodwill in a mark (for example a reasonable consumer wouldn't necessarily think 'Rolex Tractors' was related to the watch company as they're very different product fields, but Rolex would be able to argue unfair advantage is being taken of their mark) or is causing it detriment.
I think Facebook is not after FB Purity. They are after anyone who could come up with a plugin that scrapes the content and stores it to a db. People using the plugin would get access to the db in exchange: companies could look up prospective employees, ex-girlfriends spy on their defriended ex-boyfriends, etc.
Hell, the idea is so tempting that someone is definitely doing this already. And you'd only need a percentile of the users to get the information for every other facebook user.
Surely this can be said of any application that you give such permissions to with OAauth? We've already seen cases of people selling the information they gathered.
I went to the EFF for help on a similar case once (I am the author of the old Chrome "Facebook Adblock" extension).
I went to the EFF for advice mostly, did I need to comply with the takedown? Should I be concerned that I couldn't meet all of the ridiculous demands (they wanted personally identifying information about everyone who had downloaded the extension!). EFF's response? In summary "We're not sure on this one… But can we blog about it? This may or may not cause you more problems."
I didn't hear from them again after I asked them to keep it quiet for the time being.
They don't care about the legal standing. They know that they can use the lawsuit threat as a weapon to force others into compliance. It's due to the cost of funding a lawsuit which is how corporations get their way whether they have strong legal case or not.
Yes there are cases of the "small man" being able to fight back and win. I doubt its par for the course and it's one of the severe drawbacks of our legal system in the US
People have to stop acting like they have 'the right' to use facebook. It is a product; they set out a couple of rules and act a certain way. Don't like it? Just don't use Facebook.
I agree that people do not have “the right” to use Facebook, neither are people obliged to.
That doesn’t meant that you can’t just not use Facebook. Social networks, in particular Facebook, have become a central part of social interaction. You can’t simply use another network, because they’re not interoperable. Your friends aren’t there, and you’ll be missing out.
Convince your friends that facebook as a platform is poor, and use another one (or, gasp meet face to face, or call each other up, or sms, or use good ol' email and flickr).
Do you support Facebook blocking the developer pages of those who are creating the various AdBlock* browser extensions? Isn't that pretty much the same thing as FB Purity is doing but in a more general sense?
Who said anything about supporting? I am just stating that it is a product and you can choose whether you use it or not, for whatever reasons you deem worthy.
Im not so sure about that, given their virtual monopoly. I also think that changes when you have more users than some nation states have population. It can be quite damaging for some to be barred from using a service like FB and Twitter, given that many other services use these sites to spread possibly vital information. Off the top of my head, how much information from politicians would be missed out on if banned? Could this hurt the democratic process? With out realistic competition this will in time get worse. What if reasonable protest is some how seen as unpatriotic?
I cant help thinking that as some point there needs to be an independent arbitration service that users or ex-users can appeal to in this sort of event, perhaps one a site's user base gets to a certain level. Other wise, how are facebook and co ever held to account in this respect? Can a Syrian protester sue facebook in Syria, or perhaps raise a fortune to sue in the US? How does it work?
Or, people can get angry and say "Hey Facebook that is shitty behavior, I reserve the right to go elsewhere.", and otherwise bitch to everybody and make news about it. In which Facebook can decide to stay with their course, or they can decide to back down. Just because you want to act passive aggressive about the situation, doesn't mean that is the best solution to the problem. A little bit of aggression can keep companies more in line. I cannot imagine a world where people just took whatever they were given silently. I do believe it would look something like slavery.
A. You are right. Of course you can complain, you can do whatever you want. It is not the complaining that I am talking about, it is the way in which people act when they do. "They can't do this, bla bla bla, omg our privacy, bla bla bla". Instead of going at it like "Hey Facebook, that is bullshit, I won't use your site anymore if you do bla bla bla, privacy issue, bla bla."
Also, it is a bit ignorant and misplaced to suggest that slavery existed because people were just 'taking what they were given' and then link this to something as futile as a website.
The only disturbing part is that Facebook feels they have control over your interpretation of data on your own machine, even after they've happily sent it to you. It would be kind of like the beef industry banning you from buying beef because you stir-fried a steak instead of barbecuing it; the latter being the only official way to eat the meat.
Probably the way to go with this is to open source it, such that anyone can independently share and compile it. But just in case anyone becomes fatigued of fighting the ridiculous control freakery of Mr Zuckerberg’s lawyers there is always Friendica. Friendica is already open source. It’s themeable. There is no spam or bribed posts, and you don’t have to be trapped in some AOL-style walled garden.
Interesting...I started using the "Missing e" plugin for Tumblr...but after Tumblr kept giving me dire warnings about how I was compromising my security and being an otherwise bad person, I disabled it, thinking that at some point Tumblr might just hellban the plugin users. (Also, the plugin wasn't as useful for my usecases as I had hoped.)
Up-front disclaimer: I don't use facebook, but the precedent of this upsets me.
It seems to me that a website can define the API by which you access their site (some subset of HTTP), but can they really make a definitive claim to how data is rendered on the client side once that data is fetched through legitimate targets?
At first I thought Facebook was the bad guy, and then I went to this guy's site. I'm legitimately surprised I didn't get a malware warning. This thing looks like it's from the '90s. Also, the begging for donations is slightly unbecoming when one of the primary purposes of your extension is to hide ads.
Isn't such heavy (and spammy, As-Seen-On-TV-Reminiscent) advertising about a product that flouts Facebook's functionalities on Facebook just playing with fire?
I don't understand where your malware remark comes from. I've visited his website (albeit with noscript on) and it looks a lot more readable than your average news site. Seems like a low blow to attack him over how the website looks, especially when you mention you were surprised it didn't serve malware.
I don't get it, why is it that the pages are ugly a reason to consider it "the bad guy"?
I installed this extension before, I didn't keep it because it didn't had an option to silence events notification, what I was looking for, but it didn't seem bad
It would be interesting to know what FB (or Twitter, for that matter) tells its advertisers about how they can purportedly control the appearance of commercial content to the user. Are they upfront about the realities and the risks? Are they leading the advertisers on? Are advertisers well-informed? What would advertisers have to say about the existence client-side options that can easily manipulate content to the user's preferences? It would be interesting to know.
Purity user here. Love your product but think perhaps it's time to let go. Attacking you personally with lawyers will end badly for you. Their goal is not to "win" but just to delay, frustrate and (if you keep it up) bankrupt you because of all the costs. It's the standard strategy followed by lot's of big companies with deep pockets. Purity rocked and so do you. I'd put those talents to good use on other ideas.
Not true. Big companies do not always win just because they are big. I wonder in what kind of world you live. When somebody has more money then you, you bow down no matter what he wants from you? Common. A bit more courage!
People see to want to know why others have downvoted them. Here you go - here's why I downvoted your comment:
You have rushed to make assumptions and judgments here and then insulted the OP. I don't understand why you felt the need to make a personal attack. It's unwarranted. The OP had some nice, encouraging words for the FB Purity guy and then here you go making disparaging remarks.
Although you might not agree with his point, there's no need to say "Not true" and then insult him.
Somebody or FaceBook with it's infinite resources? What's the best he can hope for? Get his old account back and continue building a free product, all the while relying on the popularity of social network? If he becomes really big they'll turn it into a cat-and-mouse game like Apple did with other music players tapping in their iTunes. I was not thinking about courage, but rather about focus and choosing your battles.
Just in case there is still someone left out there who believes in Zuck's lie about openess of the internet and giving users ability to connect and access their information freely. This is your wakeup call. Facebook can shine on the outside but it will take predatory steps against anyone fucking around with them and affecting their ad sale stock display.
Do they have any legal ground for this? A browser extension doesn't interact with the service directly, and is explicitly enabled by the user, therefore it should not be subject to the service's terms. What about extensions that affect every website? God forbid we end up with a 'no-extend' tag that disallows them.
I'm a little suspicious of this. It might be true but something doesn't sit quite right. Where's the full text? Or a scan of the letter. How do we know that this is done by Facebook's legal team? Why only this product and not others like SocialFixer?
Surely the legal team would present a legal response, like a cease and desist?
This guy clearly was on FB's radar for a while, considering the previous dispute about the extension name. His post is so abrasive, I guess the relationship had never been particularly good.
One big difference is that SocialFixer (my wife uses that and loves it) changed its name from "Better Facebook" when Facebook asked him to. He didn't try to be sneaky, or play dumb by calling it "Better FB (FB stands for Friendly Browser, what what whaaaaaaaaaaaat?)".
i dont think facebooks legal team like their missives being scrutinised as they put the "all rights reserved" disclaimer on each one. if i were to post a copy of their emails, im guessing they could use the DMCA law to get the posts taken down... is an "all rights reserved" signature legally binding?
Regular copyright law perhaps. Unless they protected those emails via some technological mechanism that you had to circumvent to publish, the DMCA isn't relevant.
That said, if nothing else there is a strong argument fair use argument for posting excerpts from the communications along with your rebuttals. It's not my money of course, so I understand the reluctance to do so.
The DMCA isn't relevant if you host your own website - they could sue you for copyright infringement, but that seems unlikely. Of course, IANAL.
As a commenter below said, you would be the one taking the risk, but it would add a huge amount to the credibility of your claim if you posted the legal notices.
>What do you think I should do? Keep up the fight, or let the expletives deleted win?
You lose either way. Either, you fight to keep your app, and you're helping a company that doesn't respect your contributions, or you give up, and you lose with less effort.
Lose the easy way. Make an app for someone who cares.
Somebody on facebook has never heard of the Streisand Effect. This is actually a really great fix for facebook and it implements a lot of features I've really wanted. For example, the ability to hide sponsored stories.
So if I build a scraper to give me my information from Facebook and archive it, am I violating the ToS?
I'm so sick of this era of "Let's all build a service and lock users in" and it pains me every time YC picks another company whose future is "build a huge social base and then we'll figure out how to monetize it".
If I were Facebook and I really didn't want this extension or others like it to stay afloat, my approach would be simple... hire one guy whose only job is to monitor new releases of these extensions, and then make minor structural changes to the Facebook site that break them as soon as they're out. Become the mouse in a game of cat and mouse. When the extension keeps breaking within a day or two of each release, users would get fed up and stop using it, the devs would get overwhelmed with bug reports and complaints, and they'd all die slow, quiet deaths.