TL;DR: I agree that a service provider might cut off a FreedomBox user,
claiming a terms of service violation. I don't think it would lead to
legal trouble necessarily, but it might be very bad press for the
service provider.
On 3/19/11 4:59 PM, Thomas Lord wrote:
I think we have an annoying problem, perhaps someone can correct me
if I'm wrong:
I agree this could be a problem, though specifically one of service
interruption.
There has been talk in various contexts about having FreedomBox (FB)
interact with things like Twitter (Twit) and FaceBook (FacB). ...
I think this might be legally unachievable.
If a service provider decides that a FreedomBox owner is doing something
with their APIs that violates the terms of service, they're well within
their rights to cut off service.
This is where I fail at being a lawyer, but I think that's as far as it
goes. I suppose if a company's legal counsel really wanted to be a jerk
and make a point, they could try drumming up some form of "hacking"
charges against someone.
The process of requesting and being granted an application key comes
with legal encumbrances. There are two general kinds of encumbrance
that matter:
I don't think these are legal encumbrances, as such. It might more
easily turn into something with legal consequences if someone then
continues to try using the service after being banned. (ie. accused of
hacking, *then* comes legal trouble)
We need a legal expert to look into the matter further but it appears
to me to be effectively impossible to write free software programs
which interoperate as desired with the Twit API.
Yeah, need legal expertise to review. I'm just making guesses here,
honestly.
(2) The mere fact that critical APIs are protected by such
keys means that services like FacB and Twit have absolute authority
over what client applications may and may not do.
Absolutely true. And, one of the reasons why we're here.
Of course, if a FreedomBox was cut off from accessing a service like
Twitter or Facebook, it could be turned into a nice headline supporting
the FreedomBox cause. (Assuming I'm right about the legal stuff, because
it would really suck if someone went to jail for using Twitter, good
headline or not.)
--
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http://decafbad.com
{web,mad,computer} scientist
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