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Legal Questions About Facebook's Blocking Of Links To The Pirate Bay
from the is-that-legal? dept
Last month, the news broke that Facebook had started blocking any and all links to The Pirate Bay... including links in private messages between two users. Wired is now exploring whether or not Facebook has violated the law in censoring private communications between two people. While I find Facebook's actions to be questionable, I can't see how/why they'd be illegal. It's just an automated filter. The EFF is suggesting it might violate wiretapping laws by "looking at" private messages, but if that's true, any ISP-level spam filter probably faces the same legal questions.
That said, what is troubling is Facebook's defense of the policy, claiming that it is allowed to do so, because under its terms of service, it says users cannot "disseminate spammy, illegal, threatening or harassing content." But, as the Wired article shows, there's plenty of legit content on The Pirate Bay as well. The reporter and his editor tried to send a link via private message to a public domain book on The Pirate Bay, and had it rejected, claiming that it was an abuse and the sender would be reported. While Facebook has a right to decide how it runs its service, it's quite disappointing that it would outright declare any link to The Pirate Bay to be somehow illegal. That's simply not true.
That said, what is troubling is Facebook's defense of the policy, claiming that it is allowed to do so, because under its terms of service, it says users cannot "disseminate spammy, illegal, threatening or harassing content." But, as the Wired article shows, there's plenty of legit content on The Pirate Bay as well. The reporter and his editor tried to send a link via private message to a public domain book on The Pirate Bay, and had it rejected, claiming that it was an abuse and the sender would be reported. While Facebook has a right to decide how it runs its service, it's quite disappointing that it would outright declare any link to The Pirate Bay to be somehow illegal. That's simply not true.
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seems a bit rediculous
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Flood 'em
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Re: Flood 'em
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1 complain to facebook.
2 not use facebook.
as far as filtering TPB urls thats like asking ISPs to police there network vs P2P.
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How many steps from a torrent do you have to be for it to no longer be objectionable to people?
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Re:
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Commincations
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Your Facebook account has been deleted for violations to the terms of service. On May 8, 2009 you commented on the techdirt blog regarding the Bay that shall not be named. Please do respond to this message. Your account cannot be reinstated.
Thank you,
Lord Cutler Beckett
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what about myspace blocking all external links to legal music stores!
I am more furious about the fact that myspace is blocking links from widgets that lead people to places where they can legally buy music.
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You almost had me going until I realized the message wasn't in pirate speak like my Facebook account. Avast Ye mateys!
(I haven't understood anything Facebook has tried to communicate with me for the past few months now... and I kinda like it that way)
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I use torrents to distribute my book
Anyone can download, read, modify, and anything else allowed by the GFDL. But according to Facebook, people who want to tell others about it and include the link are in violation of the terms of agreement. I could effectively say that Facebook is limiting the audience of my book, even though it's a perfectly legal item to torrent.
I don't like that.
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Personal
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facebook blocks the pirtaebay
cheers
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Cool
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Nice
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