Facebook Goes After Greasemonkey Script Developer

palmerj3 writes "The popular Facebook Purity greasemonkey script (now renamed Fluff Buster Purity) has been used by thousands to rid their Facebook feeds from the likes of Mafia Wars, Farmville, and other annoying things. Now, Facebook is threatening the developer of this script. Does Facebook have the right to govern their website's design and functionality once it's in the browser?"

Comments

Re:What about NoScript? AdBlockers?

[TheSpoom]

No distribution is happening, which means no copyright infringement is taking place.

What threat?

[Animats]

The link in the Slashdot article links to a blog which links to a Facebook page which links to an ad-heavy web site and a Twitter log. Nowhere is the actual "legal threat" defined.

If the legal threat is real, post it to Chilling Effects.

Re:What threat?

[Little_Professor]

They aren't making him remove the script. The summary (and the script's author's site) are misleading.

This is purely a trademark issue. Initially the guy called his script Facebook Purity, a clear violation of FB's trademark. He changed the name to Fluff Buster Purity but also still markets it as F***B*** Purity, which is again a violation of Facebook's trademark, albeit a little more tenous.

If he just changes the name to something else there will be no issue. Noone is forcing him to take down his script, he just has to rename it to something that doesn't violate Facebook's trademark. Facebook are being no more evil than the Mozilla corporation who tightly control the Firefox trademark, even though the software itself is open source (hence Iceweasel etc and other silly names for adaptations of the software).

What's the point of this script?

[iJusten]

Facebook has inbuilt "ignore this"-feature. Every post has an X on the top-right corner, click it, and you can choose do you want to ignore application or the user who spams your newsfeed (in case you don't want to lose him/her from your friendlist). I did this months ago, and since then I've forgotten that Mafia Wars even exist.

Re:What's the point of this script?

[ZxCv]

FB Purity blocks entire categories of posts: all application posts, 'x became a fan of y' posts, and others.

Facebook's built-in hiding is done on a app-by-app and person-by-person basis. So every stupid new app that comes out has to be hidden individually.

Is it even needed?

[Joce640k]

Facebook makes it easy to block applications - when a Farmville/Mafia wars post appears in your intray you just say "block this application" and you'll never see it again.

Re:or Free software fundation take over

[Jesus_666]

Actually it seems that the case is entirely about him using their trademark in the name of his script (which is why it has been renamed now). The EFF would just shrug and tell him that a) they're within their rights to defent their trademark and b) they actually don't even have much of a choice about it.

Re:Thank you Facebook

[paziek]

Thats weird. Here in Poland you can ask company/whoever to delete your personal data and they have to comply. And I mean DELETE, not stop displaying. It means no backup, not on paper, not anywhere.
If you don't comply with such request, you will be forced to stop using ALL your personal data storage, in with case if Facebook had (they do?) some data center in Poland, they couldn't use it anymore, at least not for personal data.

Seems like a common sense for me, keeping snapshots of personal data even tho that person doesn't want you to? What the shit?