The social-network giant Facebook recently filed lawsuits intended to thwart a flurry of scams used by black hat affiliate marketers.

The lawsuits were filed over fraudulent "Dislike Buttons" and "Free Gift Card Scams" used to lure unsuspecting users to visit internet marketing sites. 

Two men were accused Jason Swan of Las Vegas, Nevada and Steven Richter of Kings Park, New York. Also the Canadian affiliate marketing company MaxBounty was implicated in a third lawsuit. Facebook filed all three lawsuits in federal court in San Jose California on Tuesday Oct 19th 2010.

"The focus on the cases we filed this week was to go after people who try to leverage our brands, our applications, and our pages to promote their scams and to propagate them using spam," said Craig Clark, Facebook's litigation counsel.

The lawsuits are aimed at countering the growing numbers of "too good to be true" offers that have inundated the social network, duping unwary users to promote them.

In these scams unwitting participants were promised free iPads or US$1000 gift cards to post messages containing commercial content to people on their friend list.

Although Facebook has sued fraudulent marketers and spammers in the past this time they have named an affiliate marketing company in their litigation.

Facebook's court filings cited, MaxBounty "encouraged its affiliates to carry out these schemes by providing them with assurances that their advertising methods were legitimate, by encouraging and coaching affiliates on ways to increase the effectiveness of their Facebook activities, and by providing technical support and substantial financial gain to the affiliates who agreed to participate in the scheme." Calling MaxBounty the "mastermind" of multiple spamming schemes.

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/208402/facebook_sues_over_free_gift_card_dislike_button_scams.html?tk=mod_rel

Hello fellow WA'ers I hope you have read this far. I want to make clear I have two reasons for posting this blog entry. Of course the obvious one is to share news that relates to our marketplace, and I am glad to see Facebook sending a clear message to spammers and scammers.

The second and perhaps not so obvious reason concerns spinning articles.

My concern is this, I took an article that recently broke in the news for the content and value it offered its readers. Then I took that knowledge made it my own and published it here.

The only quotes I used were direct quotes from Facebook's litigation council. I also included the source I pulled this content from. I included the link to the source to give a comparison reference.

So my question is would this be considered taboo in the information sharing circles ?

Please only those who are knowledgeable in these matters reply. I am not looking for opinions on this matter just legal facts

No ill will intended whatsoever.

Thanks,

Wes

Addendum :

I am in no way affiliated or endorse MaxBounty or any related products or services MaxBounty may offer. The link provided to the MaxBounty website is solely intended for educational purposes .I hereby absolve myself of any and all liability associated with MaxBounty and the contents of the MaxBounty website.