Fwd: Facebook Site Scraping TOS and better protocol for indexing

Here's a message from Karl on Facebook that's relevant to our call today -
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Karl Dubost <karl+w3c@la-grange.net>
Date: Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 9:33 PM
Subject: Facebook Site Scraping TOS and better protocol for indexing
To: TAG List <www-tag@w3.org>


Facebook has published a new TOS [1] for site scraping.
You need now according to the item 2 of the TOS, a written permission
for Automated Data Collection.

       "2. You will not engage in Automated Data Collection
       without Facebook’s express written permission."

They also create a robots.txt [2] with some rules for some domains of
the sites. I didn't evaluate which parts were really covered.

All in all it reminds me about the articles [3][4] I have written
recently (with olivier thereaux) on how managing digital opacity and
that the tools available today for the users are very poor. It is
interesting to see that in this case, it's more to protect revenues
than privacy or maybe both, but without user choices. I have the
feeling that it is time to propose protocols and implementation to
help people to have a better control on indexing.


[1]: http://www.facebook.com/apps/site_scraping_tos_terms.php
[2]: http://facebook.com/robots.txt
[3]: http://www.w3.org/2008/09/msnws/papers/olivier-karl
[4]: http://www.la-grange.net/2010/05/28/karl-dubost-privacy-ws

--
Karl Dubost
Montréal, QC, Canada
http://www.la-grange.net/karl/

Received on Wednesday, 16 June 2010 09:07:19 UTC