Hi all, I'm wondering if any of our sharp, lawyer-ly friends and colleagues have made a careful comparison between the ToS for FB and Google+? - and if so, if you can share on-list (or off) your initial findings, impressions, etc.? I'm particularly curious about the following. At the recent IACAP (International Association for Computing and Philosophy) conference here in Aarhus, one of our colleagues (with considerable expertise in the relevant technical domains) suggested that FB's dataset and data-mining techniques would allow FB to identify, for example, swing voters in a given state or nation - and then sell that information to the highest bidder (ostensibly, a political party wanting to win). Given what I know from the computational side (precious little, I admit), this does not seem implausible - i.e., technically feasible, if not already commonplace. If so - then is there anything in a ToS (whether FB's or Google's or ...) to prevent such uses of "our" data, i.e., the information we otherwise happily provide at no cost to such proprietary venues and services in the name of social networking, convenience, etc.? To my knowledge, José van Dijck has written most perceptively about this dimension of social networking - ³Users Like You², pp. 14-58 in Media, Culture & Society, vol. 31, no. 1. (2009) (and with thanks to my colleague Jakob Linaa Jensen for making me aware of this article). But certainly Sonja Livingstone, Nancy Baym, Janne Bromseth and Jenny Sunden, among other contributors to the Blackwell Handbook of Internet Studies articulate the broad concern and point that our participation in such sites and services raise a number of thorny ethical and political questions about our thereby giving up - for "free" - important personal data that others will use to their benefit, and not necessarily ours. Hence, an important topic and series of issues, it seems to me - thanks in advance for comments and suggestions. - charles ess Institut for Informations- og Medievidenskab Helsingforsgade 14 8200 Århus N. Denmark mail: <imvce@hum.au.dk> tel: (+45) 8942 9250 Professor, Philosophy and Religion Drury University, Springfield, Missouri 65802 USA Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23