There are many problems with the ownership of data, entitlement, etc.
I've argued with the founder of delicious endlessly about the API limits they imposed which ultimately meant that nothing interesting could be done on the outside with delicious. Nothing interesting ever happened on the inside and ultimately it got sold to Yahoo! and destroyed. I guess the founder got some cash, but the data that was contributed by the end users was destroyed.
Nobody asked them for permission to sell to a psychotic company, have the site destroyed, etc.
Towards the end spammers found that they could (within the API terms) get endless amounts of legitimate 'cover traffic' to cover their links.
I've argued with the founder of delicious endlessly about the API limits they imposed which ultimately meant that nothing interesting could be done on the outside with delicious. Nothing interesting ever happened on the inside and ultimately it got sold to Yahoo! and destroyed. I guess the founder got some cash, but the data that was contributed by the end users was destroyed.
Nobody asked them for permission to sell to a psychotic company, have the site destroyed, etc.
Towards the end spammers found that they could (within the API terms) get endless amounts of legitimate 'cover traffic' to cover their links.