Jeff and .NET

I am confused.  Why do you not limit access to your Facebook profile if you do not want someone to have access to your email address?  You compare what Scoble did to Beacon, but there was no consent with Beacon, like there was with making your profile available to "friends".  Is this some weird form of "you can see, but you cannot have"?

I don't see where the line is.  Is it unethical for me to look up a friend on Facebook, friend him/her, then copy his/her contact information into my mail client?  Let me assume you object to _automating_ this process, although the difference is dubious.   In particular, in the Facebook terms of service [1]:

"In addition, you agree not to use the Service or the Site to:"

...

"use automated scripts to collect information from or otherwise interact with the Service or the Site;"

Curiously, the Gmail program policies [2] contains the following tidbit:

"In addition to (and/or as some examples of) the violations described in Section 3 of the Terms of Use, users may not:"

...

"data mining any web property (including Google) to find email addresses"

Wait a second!  Does Facebook violate that policy by allowing the importation of Gmail data?

[1] http://facebook.com/terms.php

[2] www.google.com/.../program_policies.html

Now you are changing the goalposts, from "some other system" to "another social networking service".  What happens when the line blurs between mail client and social network services?  After all, Facebook does provide a fairly simple but elegant messaging system, with a very usable (in my humble opinion) system for adding people to the "To:" list.  I could even see some people as using it purely for the messaging.  For these people, is there any real difference between Facebook and Gmail?

I suggest that, regardless of whether what Scoble did was right (I would probably consider his actions slightly unethical, but I would not come down like a ton of bricks on him), we all need to be more careful of what data we make public.  If you take a look at the Facebook terms of service, they are a bit shocking.  To paraphrase, "We don't take any responsibility for hackers stealing all the data you provide us."  Being more careful of who gets our data completely short-circuits issues such as the Scoble-Facebook-Plaxo one.  If solving the problem noted here is the goal, I suggest this.  If it is to point out hypocrisy, I think there are better targets more worth your or my time.