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Power.com Sues Facebook: Data Ownership War Breaks Out

mashable.com — There's been an interesting and ongoing saga occurring between two companies: Power.com, a popular social media aggregator, and FacebookFacebook, the world's

Who dugg this? Made popular Jul 10, 2009

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  • H3llr41s3r, on 07/10/2009, -0/+33Never heard of power.com until now.
  • inactive, on 07/10/2009, -0/+23Never heard of FacebookFacebook until now
  • spunker202, on 07/10/2009, -1/+13Lol @ dataownership.

    You should know that whatever you post on social media sites, is doomed to be swallowed by teh internetz and can work for or against you in the future.

    It's funny to see people bitching into hysteria when someone install a camera ( for security purposes ) and yet they freely pour their lives onto social web knowing that it's not their propriety anymore.

  • 11mdg11, on 07/10/2009, -0/+5What the ***** is power.com?
  • evilsnoopi3, on 07/10/2009, -0/+5The anti-competitive argument won't hold up as long as Facebook points out that it has 1) provided a clear and simple way for power.com to integrate with FB accounts--Connect and 2) any unlicensed login/crawl deprives Facebook of any and all revenue they would have otherwise generated from advertising while still relying on their service, servers, and bandwidth.

    Facebook provides everything, gets no money, and Power prospers which sounds a lot like anti-competitive practice to me. Rather than providing a service to compete with FB, Power is stealing FB's service... Unless they use "Connect."
  • Spinfusor, on 07/10/2009, -0/+5Facebook²?
  • DarkSpoon, on 07/10/2009, -1/+4i think the difference could be that people control what they put on the social networking sites. you don't know when/what they could be recording with the camera.
  • statik99, on 11/03/2009, -0/+2Sometimes, in a weird RIAA way, bad PR can be seen as good PR I suppose.
  • sockpuppets, on 07/10/2009, -1/+3This argument is as old as time. Remember when eBay didn't like being aggregated in 1999? The premise facebook needs to maintain is simple- while the stuff on facebook isn't their property, the servers that host is are. So, if you want to access facebook servers, you must do so on their terms.

    Victory, facebook.
  • tweedius, on 07/10/2009, -0/+2They do make a valid point. Facebook as a site has absolutely no content that is worthwhile without their users. Facebook doesn't add content, it's the people that use it that make it worthwhile. It's almost like if digg would say that the links they provide that we vote for and submit are theirs.
  • 3Den, on 07/11/2009, -0/+2You don't pay to use facebook... you aren't their customer.
    Facebook is collecting and selling information.

    To think that another site can just up and scrape the site and use it however they want is just... silly.

    I'm with facebook on this one, as big and evil as they are.

    If you wanted to build a business model based on sitting on top of facebook, perhaps you should have talked to facebook about it first?

  • DJWilsonX, on 07/10/2009, -0/+1so power.com is trying to be the next meebo?
  • endisnighe, on 07/12/2009, -0/+1Does anyone here know that Facebook is affiliated with the government. It is a data collection site. I would put millions on a bet that Facebook wins. Proof of gov connection, for what purpose would anyone want to put on the internet everywhere they have been. They have an application that you input all of the places you have been and then it of course sends its notices to all friends to ask if you want to tell where you have been. My God, its big brother OH NO That is why their money model is not important.
  • rodted2, on 07/10/2009, -0/+1I was wondering the same thing. I originally thought it meant iPower.com the web hosting company which suck balls by the way.
  • Mtown, on 07/10/2009, -0/+1The "Cooliris" firefox addon lets you skip facebook ads a well. How is that different?
  • Mtown, on 07/10/2009, -0/+1So facebook thinks it "owns" its user's pictures? Whey the hell would they want that. If I see one more album titled, "First weekend of summer break, part 3 of 7" or, "Blurry, underexposed pics vol. 3" i'm going to lose it. If I were facebook I would just allow power.com to have access to all of those crappy albums and pointless blog posts that nobody reads and be done with it.
  • Biohazard6601, on 07/10/2009, -0/+1How the ***** is it anti-competitive if power.com is pulling data from FB servers? that seems to be similar to theft if the users are storing data on FB servers and power.com is gaining ad revenue through it, while FB does not
  • JCEEZ, on 07/10/2009, -0/+1Please never ever, ever, be in a decision making position at a company.
  • inactive, on 07/11/2009, -0/+1Because regular Facebook needed more pokes and app requests.
  • PxCxG, on 07/10/2009, -0/+1Whoever wins, it's the users who lose.
  • endisnighe, on 07/12/2009, -0/+1Catching a ride, does anyone here know that Facebook is affiliated with the government. It is a data collection site. I would put millions on a bet that Facebook wins. Proof of gov connection, for what purpose would anyone want to put on the internet everywhere they have been. They have an application that you input all of the places you have been and then it of course sends its notices to all friends to ask if you want to tell where you have been. My God its big brother OH NO
  • Mtown, on 07/11/2009, -0/+1I was just kidding, christ. I know it's waaaaaaaaay more than that but i just thought it was funny that facebook was coveting its 90% worthless/stupid/out of focus pictures.
  • stubear, on 07/10/2009, -0/+1It's a site for complete losers. If you are connected to that many social networks and you need to check them frequently then you need to get a life.
  • tweedius, on 07/11/2009, -0/+1No, facebook doesn't provide the content, all of its users do, that was my point.
  • 3Den, on 07/11/2009, -0/+1No, but the data about which links are being voted on how much and how often ARE theirs.

    Facebook has no worthwhile content?
    Content is ALL they haev - all that demographic data - who, what, when, where, why, how often they are online, from where, who they talk to, what movies they like, what music they like, all those stupid little apps - all that data is aggregated and sold off. THAT is what makes facebook worth billions. They have the best data on earth to mine if you want to know what joe average is up to.


  • UV0001, on 07/10/2009, -0/+0addon =/= an organization

    If facebook wanted to and figured out how to, they could very well block said addon with no legal repercussions. They can't simply block Power.com lest they really get canned for anti-competitive practices.
  • inactive, on 07/10/2009, -3/+3Nobody cares.
  • BrandonJM, on 07/10/2009, -3/+2Well said. That deserves a "Well done, sir."
  • skinturtle, on 07/10/2009, -1/+0LOL..underneath the article are links to similar topics. Look at all the idiots suing each other. Is that all these companies know is suing each other?
  • igoreti, on 07/10/2009, -5/+2:P Never heard of power.com

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