[科技前沿]Facebook網絡公司被控限制其使用者

來源：Times Onlime 編輯：Vicki

Facebook網絡公司是否希望壟斷網絡市場？成立不久的網絡公司近日將Facebook告上法庭，稱其限制使用者轉載自己的資料。Vachani先生認爲Facebook公司這樣做無異於電話公司鎖定自己用戶的電話號碼並收取高中端費用。當然這種比較有點言重，畢竟用戶可以在Facebook上與自己的朋友聊天，而且Facebook暫時並沒有向自己的用戶收費。

Facebook accused of restricting its users

Is Facebook monopolising(壟斷) the social networking market? That is the claim levelled in a lawsuit(訴訟) filed on Friday by , a fledgling (幼鳥,無經驗的)website that lets users interact on multiple social networks.

Users of Facebook put work into developing their profiles(簡介,概況). 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 in December.

alleges(宣稱) that Facebook restricts users and stifles (遏制)competition, and is in violation of California’s unfair competition laws and US antitrust(反壟斷) laws.

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

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

At issue is “data portability(數據可攜帶性)”, the ability for users to take their information from one website to another freely. Facebook has been criticised for flouting(藐視) 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(主張) 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 ’s charges were baseless(毫無根據的). “We have made numerous attempts to work with but, after making commitments to comply with our policies, they continued to put Facebook user data at risk,” it said.

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

, 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 last month, according to analytics(分析學) 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(引用單元) 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 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(無線電話公司) locking customers’ mobile phones and charging high termination fees.

But that analogy(類比) 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(引起爭論的) but more analogous(可比擬的) comparison would be e-mail,” said Chris Saad, head of communications for the Data Portability Project(數據可移植性項目). “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(不可變更的) march towards openness.”

Keke View：Facebook是一個社會化網絡站點。它於2004年2月4日上線。
　　Facebook的創始人是Mark Zuckerberg，畢業於Phillips Exeter Academy，並繼承了Exeter的傳統進入了哈佛大學。最初，網站的註冊僅限於哈佛學院（譯者注：哈佛大學的本科生部）的學生。在之 後的兩個月內，註冊擴展到波士頓地區的其他高校（波士頓學院 Boston College、波士頓大學 Boston University、麻省理工學院 MIT、特福茨大學 Tufts）以及羅切斯特大學 Rochester、斯坦福 Stanford、紐約大學 NYU、西北大學和所有的長春藤名校。第二年，很多其他學校也被加入進來。最終，在全球範圍內有一個大學後綴電子郵箱的人（如 , 等）都可以註冊。之後，在Facebook中也可以建立起高中和公司的社會化網絡。而從2006年9月11日起，任何用戶輸入有效電子郵件地址和自己的年齡段，即可加入。用戶可以選擇加入一個或多個網絡，比如中學的、公司的、或地區的。