This story is getting increasingly interesting now that Facebook and Google have joined dataportability.org. I don’t have a problem with people being able to take away content that they have have contributed, but I do have concerns about other friends being able to export my private data and use it for however they wish. Let’s see how this evolves.

A very interesting and contentious issue. It interests me how fast Facebook took off and how concerns and questions about the service are now growing equally fast.

I see both Keith and Robert’s point of view and I’m not really sure where I stand on this quite yet. One thought that comes to mind is to compare this issue to copyright. When you have an idea for something (e.g. a idea for a movie) that idea is not protected by copyright. What is protected by copyright is the expression of that idea (to follow the example, a written outline of a screenplay).

Perhaps a piece of personal information, like an email address, can be passed freely back and forth through different networks (not protected) but how this information is organized and housed is protected.

What gives Facebook its value is how it organizes information and then makes it easy to share with others. That’s the part that Facebook has a right to protect. That said, I think people have the right to own and share his or her personal information. If I have someone’s email address, I should be able to share that freely regardless of how I obtained it.

After writing this far, I think I’m siding more with Scoble but I think Facebook has some kind of right to protect its business too.

Let’s look at the Yellow Pages. You’re saying I shouldn’t be able to photo copy the pages that my friends are on?

OK, how about write down their names?

So, with regard to Facebook, are we saying we’re not able to compare whether your name is on Twitter, or Facebook, or Yelp, or other social networks?

That we’re not able to gather stuff like names, phone numbers, or email addresses for our other address books? Really? I can do that manually. Why not automate it?

By the way, Facebook’s competitors DO let me copy my social graph stuff and put it INTO Facebook. Interesting that Facebook doesn’t like it both ways.