[科技前沿]Facebook网络公司被控限制其使用者

Facebook网络公司被控限制其使用者

来源：Times Onlime 编辑：Vicki

Facebook网络公司是否希望垄断网络市场？成立不久的网络公司Power.com近日将Facebook告上法庭，称其限制使用者转载自己的资料。Vachani先生认为Facebook公司这样做无异于电话公司锁定自己用户的电话号码并收取高中端费用。当然这种比较有点言重，毕竟用户可以在Facebook上与自己的朋友聊天，而且Facebook暂时并没有向自己的用户收费。

Facebook accused of restricting its users

Is Facebook monopolising(垄断) the social networking market? That is the claim levelled in a lawsuit(诉讼) filed on Friday by Power.com, a fledgling (幼鸟,无经验的)website that lets users interact on multiple social networks.

Users of Facebook put work into developing their profiles(简介,概况). They upload pictures, put in their phone numbers and e-mail addresses, and connect with friends who have done the same. For those with hundreds of friends, Facebook becomes a rich personal directory(人名地址簿).

But once that information is on Facebook, it is impossible to get it off. Users cannot export their own photos, or even a contact list of their friends, much less move that information to another site.

The lawsuit, filed in the US district court of northern California, is a response to a suit Facebook filed against Power.com in December.

Power.com alleges(宣称) that Facebook restricts users and stifles (遏制)competition, and is in violation of California’s unfair competition laws and US antitrust(反垄断) laws.

“They’re blocking users from accessing their data freely,” said Steve Vachani, Power.com chief executive. “And they are blocking companies that are trying to innovate around their service.”

Facebook sued Power.com for “scraping” data off its site and storing the user names and passwords of users who tried to access their Facebook accounts through Power.com, in violation of Facebook’s terms of service.

At issue is “data portability(数据可携带性)”, the ability for users to take their information from one website to another freely. Facebook has been criticised for flouting(藐视) this freedom, and preventing users from interacting with the broader web.

But while Facebook does not allow users to export their contacts to other sites, it has begun to work with groups that advocate(主张) open standards.

It has joined the Data Portability Project, which promotes open information standards, and is on the board of the OpenID Foundation, which is working towards a universal login system.

Through a new service, Facebook Connect, it allows users to log in and interact on more than 10,000 other sites.

“They’re doing everything they can to be open while remaining closed,” said Marc Canter, chief executive of Broadband Mechanics and an expert on data portability.

On Friday, Facebook said Power.com’s charges were baseless(毫无根据的). “We have made numerous attempts to work with Power.com but, after making commitments to comply with our policies, they continued to put Facebook user data at risk,” it said.

“The claims asserted by Power.com in its countersuit are without merit and we will fight them aggressively.”

Power.com, which was founded in Brazil, has funding from venture capitalist firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. After it launched to a positive reception last year, traffic to the site fell off a cliff. Just 14,000 people in the US visited Power.com last month, according to analytics(分析学) firm Compete.

Facebook’s restrictive data portability standards might be inconvenient to some. But proving that these practices are illegal could be very difficult. There are no good legal precedents(引用单元) to call upon, and Facebook’s terms of service, which all users tacitly agree to when using the site, essentially grant Facebook licence to restrict outside access to user data.

“What Facebook is doing is not necessarily illegal,” said Mr Canter. But the issue of data portability was an important one, and he hoped Power.com would pursue the case because that would provide a forum to air issues of data portability and privacy.

“They will have to go the long haul(持久), and it will be a multi-year case,” he said. “Otherwise it just looks like a publicity stunt(作秀).”

Mr Vachani said Facebook’s restrictions on users’ data were comparable to wireless phone companies(无线电话公司) locking customers’ mobile phones and charging high termination fees.

But that analogy(类比) goes only so far. Facebook does not charge its users any fees, and through Facebook Connect it is enabling people to interact with their Facebook friends on other sites.

“A less contentious(引起争论的) but more analogous(可比拟的) comparison would be e-mail,” said Chris Saad, head of communications for the Data Portability Project(数据可移植性项目). “E-mail used to be a bunch of locked-in services; you couldn’t e-mail from one service to another. But the web wouldn’t have taken off if they didn’t start talking to one another.”

The same is now true for companies such as Facebook as they work to develop the “social web”, an online world where a user’s friends can be with them everywhere they go online.

“Ultimately, for social networking to be fully ingrained (牢固的)in the internet, no one company is going to own it,” Mr Saad said. “It’s going to be an inexorable(不可变更的) march towards openness.”

Keke View：Facebook是一个社会化网络站点。它于2004年2月4日上线。

　　Facebook的创始人是Mark Zuckerberg，毕业于Phillips Exeter Academy，并继承了Exeter的传统进入了哈佛大学。最初，网站的注册仅限于哈佛学院（译者注：哈佛大学的本科生部）的学生。在之 后的两个月内，注册扩展到波士顿地区的其他高校（波士顿学院 Boston College、波士顿大学 Boston University、麻省理工学院 MIT、特福茨大学 Tufts）以及罗切斯特大学 Rochester、斯坦福 Stanford、纽约大学 NYU、西北大学和所有的长春藤名校。第二年，很多其他学校也被加入进来。最终，在全球范围内有一个大学后缀电子邮箱的人（如 .edu, .ac.uk等）都可以注册。之后，在Facebook中也可以建立起高中和公司的社会化网络。而从2006年9月11日起，任何用户输入有效电子邮件地址和自己的年龄段，即可加入。用户可以选择加入一个或多个网络，比如中学的、公司的、或地区的。