> He was with the head of their security team, who I knew slightly because I'd reported several security holes to Facebook over the years. The attorney said that they were just about to sue me into oblivion, but in light of my previous good relationship with their security team, they'd give me one chance to stop the process. They asked and received a verbal assurance from me that I wouldn't publish the data, and sent me on a letter to sign confirming that.
The robots.txt part was just Facebook lawyers trying to grasp to a contract with them; the actual issue was that the EULA allows Facebook to make basic information available, but users do not expect such a database to be freely available. Although I personally regret there is so little done by the data team to help research, legal consequences were not worth the prank; what actually matters is usage, and Facebook clearly police the spirit of the platform rather then the law, even beyond their contract partner—see RapLeaf.
> He was with the head of their security team, who I knew slightly because I'd reported several security holes to Facebook over the years. The attorney said that they were just about to sue me into oblivion, but in light of my previous good relationship with their security team, they'd give me one chance to stop the process. They asked and received a verbal assurance from me that I wouldn't publish the data, and sent me on a letter to sign confirming that.
The robots.txt part was just Facebook lawyers trying to grasp to a contract with them; the actual issue was that the EULA allows Facebook to make basic information available, but users do not expect such a database to be freely available. Although I personally regret there is so little done by the data team to help research, legal consequences were not worth the prank; what actually matters is usage, and Facebook clearly police the spirit of the platform rather then the law, even beyond their contract partner—see RapLeaf.