Facebook Is Using You

Wait… Facebook is a… business?!

Seriously though. Facebook is a for profit company. I don't really think thats wrong or even ambiguous?

I think this is a terrible headline that masks an interesting philosophical debate. Especially at this community, we feel we intuitively understand that we get the convenience and social value from Facebook for $0, and we pay in our personal data they use to serve up advertisements. That to me is hardly newsworthy and a relatively uninteresting piece.

But- there is an interesting question in what is an appropriate use of our personal data w.r.t credit ratings, financial decisions, etc... Just like there are anti-discrimination laws that prevent mortgage servicers from altering policies based on race, perhaps there should be other walls to keep separate how our data can be used financially.

This is a question the NY Times should've posed instead of this clearly linkbaity uninteresting headline.

I doubt that even the complete record of your online activities would be found by a court to be copyrightable. While it might represent a lot of effort, the fact that the record exists is ancillary to the reason you keep adding to that record. The fact that you don't have access to most of what facebook collects about you puts a snag in the argument that you're doing it for creative purposes.

Copyright for databases or collections of data is variable, depending on the legal framework where you live.

In the EU, there is some protection but it requires either creativity going into the compilation, or the work done to create the compilation must exceed a certain threshold:

  http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Intellectual_Property_Rights/SEM2M2M26WD_0.html
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_Directive

In the U.S., there is no protection for a compilation of data just because you put work into the compilation:

  http://www.bitlaw.com/source/cases/copyright/feist.html

In any case, the basic pieces of information about you are not copyrightable, even in the EU. They have adopted privacy laws to deal with personal data.

There's been some discussion on HN about copyright of public transit schedules, I believe in Australia and/or India.

> It's hard enough to secure centralized systems using proprietary code behind firewalls managed by an army of experts. How can a decentralized system possibly avoid becoming a 0day distributed botnet?

I do not understand your concern.

Centralized systems are easier to crack, not harder. Proprietary code may or may not be easier to crack, but I'd lean towards easier. Distributed systems do not require you to not have firewalls. Distributed systems do not require you to not have experts managing them. Nodes of a distributed system do not have to obey the commands of other nodes or have a central control mechanism.

How would a decentralized system ever become a 0day botnet?

It IS using you and if you aren't smart enough to figure that out then you're living in a bubble universe.

FB is an awful, monstrous growth on society. I'm sorry if this sounds like an over-reaction, but its pure, undiluted evil. Its reach is just way far too pervasive and the tracking on non-members is just plain illegal as far as I'm concerned. Unfortunately, people seem to have come to believe that society couldn't exist without it.

I'm (vainly probably) hoping that the flotation will, ultimately, be its downfall. Even existing toothless Regulation might scupper its share value enough to make it an obvious bubble investment -- and people might wake the fuck up and start to remember the real value of money, people and privacy again.