[graue]

> it seems like when you get to use a free service or website that costs many millions of dollars to develop, giving the company access to your data is a fairly small price to pay.

Unfortunately, using Facebook is hardly a free choice anymore. I personally don't use it, but I have no delusions about the cost that comes with resisting. You miss out on events, news and connections. And because of Facebook's ubiquity, no other social network is a complete substitute. Some employers and dating advice columnists even find it "suspicious" when someone isn't on Facebook:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/08/06/beware-te...

So there's a lot of pressure to use it. And while you can choose not to have an account, you can't choose to live in a world where Facebook doesn't exist. Even if you never touch the site, people can take photos of you and write status updates about you and post them there, and that affects your privacy. A sociologist I follow has written a good (slightly more theoretical) analysis of this problem:

http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2012/05/21/a-new-priv...

As for giving away your data being a "small price to pay", we'll have to disagree on that. Some people value their privacy more than others. And due to the above, we're limited in our ability to make an individual decision to preserve that privacy. Hence, I applaud the strict EU privacy laws and wish we had stronger privacy protections in the US as well.