Hi Chris

Thanks for commenting. I have been thinking about Facebook's terms and its approach quite a bit more since this post. I actually did a quick and dirty comparison between Google's terms of use (I see Google's terms as a good starting point) and Facebook's current terms and then also looked at the draft Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and the Principles in a post on my business blog: http://webtechlaw.com/where-you-stand-google-an…

The proposed terms of use (for lack of a better term) are very encouraging and the approach Facebook as adopted is very interesting from a lawyer's perspective. It is certainly enough to convince me that Facebook may not be the epitome of evil on the social Web. I reserve that place for LinkedIn which has terms of use that make Facebook's reviled and retracted terms look tame. I'll probably feel even better about Facebook once the current town hall process is complete and the new legal framework is in place but, as I mentioned, it is very encouraging.

I would like to see more portability possible, that is to say an opportunity to move more data out of Facebook (I'm thinking specifically about friends list and contact details) but from what I understand in the news lately, Facebook is opening up more and more of its previously closed apis. That says something too.