[Xuzz]

I would actually agree that his Facebook scraping should get him kicked off, but not due to some terms of service crap. But think about it. Whose data was he scraping? Maybe Facebook's, maybe the user who entered it should own it. But I don't think it's fair for anyone else to grab all that data and use it for other purposes.

I'm glad that Facebook protects me from someone trying to do that with the data I give them.

[raganwald]

If you’re on FB and you friend me and you allow me to see your name and phone number, I can copy and paste it manually. What exactly are FB protecting you from? The people you’ve already trusted with your name and phone number?

FB are protecting you from your friends migrating away from FB. Right now that phone book and those pictures and those birthdays all act as a barrier to leaving FB. If it was easy for someone—who you have already trusted, remember—to download your name and phone number and birthday, they might leave and just call you on your birthday. Or send you an email.

FB has protected themselves. Which is their right, but given that the people you’ve trusted with your phone number can already copy and paste it, FB’s road blocks aren’t about your privacy, they’re about creating friction.

[Isofarro]

"If you’re on FB and you friend me and you allow me to see your name and phone number, I can copy and paste it manually."

At the time of the Scoble/Plaxo scraping thing, you couldn't copy and paste the phone number. IIRC, it was an image of text, to prevent it from being copied. It could only be transcribed at that time.

[mindcrime]

But I don't think it's fair for anyone else to grab all that data and use it for other purposes.

Why not? Wouldn't the exact purpose be a determining criteria in that judgment? What if, for example, I use a smartphone that doesn't have an official Facebook app for it, and I want convenient access to my friends' phone numbers and emails from my phone, so I can call and email them. Assuming they actually are my friends in the first place, calling and emailing them is a perfectly normal thing to do. But why should I be limited by Facebook's constraints in terms of how I can access their contact info?

Use your imagination, and I'm sure you can come up with plenty of our perfectly valid reasons why somebody would want to use info about their Facebook friends, outside of Facebook's insidious walled garden.

[bootload]

"... I'm glad that Facebook protects me from someone trying to do that with the data I give them. ..."

I would have thought on HN people, would intuitively recognise "The illusion of anonymity" ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/4186206797/ on Facebook and social software in general. Any data you supply, can be bit toggled from private to public at the server.

[anonymoushn]

This seems a bit weird to me. If I could choose exactly how Facebook shares my data with other people, I would probably not choose "Disclose to my creepy ex that I still have his or her number in my phone (even if I have my profile completely locked down and am not friends with my creepy ex on Facebook), but make it difficult for people I trust with my phone number to take my phone number and put it wherever they like."