14 DAY TRIAL // Finally, someone in Facebook has read their Terms of Service and made up their mind about how they should feel about file-sharing services implementing features for their website. After going back and forward in recent days, Facebook announced Limewire representatives that they would block LimeWire's new feature “Share on Facebook” if they don't do it first. Reacting to this message, LimeWire decided to disable for the moment the above mentioned feature so it would remain on good terms with Facebook.
On good terms is what LimeWire will not be with its users who were absolutely ecstatic about the feature, many praising its usefulness and innovation. What many of them don't know is the fact that LimeWire was not the first service involved in file-sharing to get banned from Facebook. The Pirate Bay, as always, did it first.
Pirate Bay had its quarrels with Facebook admins back in April 2009, when a similar feature, also called “Share on Facebook,” was banned from the social network. Facebook representatives stated that “Facebook respects copyrights and our Terms of Service prohibits placement of ‘Share on Facebook’ links on sites that contain any content that is infringing.” What Facebook doesn't know now is that after its resurgence a few days ago, Pirate Bay admins have bypassed Facebook's block and re-enabled the feature yet again.
But going back to LimeWire's recent message exchange with Facebook admins, TorrentFreak has reported a real drama that went behind the scenes between the companies. As reported, it seems that after the launch of the “Share on Facebook” feature, social network representatives have asked LimeWire to do some modifications to the feature for a better implementation with their API service. But when LimeWire thought it was safe, a dreaded email came from Facebook politely asking them to disable the feature or have it blocked.
We will never know what really happened in the Facebook offices (and neither LimeWire representatives), we could only speculate that someone stumbled upon a paper that read “Terms of Service” or maybe someone in the Tech department forwarded a message to Management and one of them was reminded of the Pirate Bay incident, or who knows what else, but surely if you were a LimeWire executive, you would definitely be mad about what happened in this strange story.
Hoping to eventually persuade someone at Facebook for a future collaboration, LimeWire's Vice-President of Product Management Jason Herskowit issued this polite statement through TorrentFreak, “It is unfortunate for us all, particularly considering that LimeWire and Facebook share the common vision of being a place to connect and share. We hope to find a way to work with Facebook to re-enable the features that you guys continue to ask for and we sincerely apologize for having to remove this feature in the near-term.”