It appears people still don't understand that Facebook is a company and a BUSINESS. Not a government institute, not a public service. Making money is their sole purpose. Anything else they do is just a means to make that money. People seem to think they can have some expectation of privacy from Facebook when their primary business model is advertising revenues. The way to make the advertising most effective is to base it on your information. Why should they care who you want to see it or what you want done with it? I'd say you're lucky they aren't selling your personal information en masse to advertisers, and they very well may be. If you put your information on Facebook, you should be aware that you are forfeiting all rights to it and you have no right to demand it be private. The people who complain about Facebook not having enough privacy are the same people who complain about Google knowing your search history. It's time to grow up now, this is how the world works.

You're so right! Spammers would never do something amoral or illegal, that's for sure. Of course, even if we wanted to sue them, who would we sue? If we (government) knew a corporation / person was spamming, wouldn't we shut them down regardless of 'patent infringement'?

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This is entirely the problem. The fact that the patent system in the United States (and many other countries) allows a ridiculous number of patents for things with plenty of prior art, plain obvious ideas and troll patents (i.e. the Russian who trademarked the ";-)" or Tsera's ridiculous patent on the concept of a touchpad). The system is entirely broken and needs to be re-done from the ground up or we will continue to have patent trolls trolling trolls and nobody being able to do a damn thing anymore without stepping on some obscure company's patent that they're likely not even using for any product. I imagine that many companies won't release their software or drivers open-source because they're afraid that someone has patented something they've used. It's not just the patent system, either, trademark law and copyright are no better, allowing ridiculously obvious patents to be held for ridiculous amounts of time. As there are more companies, more inventors and as time goes on, there will be fewer and fewer possible inventive ideas. Yes, it will be an absolute nightmare of red tape to fix the system and I'd be shocked if it actually happened, but just because something is unlikely doesn't mean the concept is invalid. At the very least, we need some reform, because this system is failing us and is becoming a detriment to society where all information, ideas and works can be kept under lock essentially indefinitely. As the cliche goes, information wants to be free and this applies to patents just as much as any other works. Short patent lives allows for collaboration and the combination of winning ideas to make greater inventions that benefit the company, the inventors and society as a whole. We need to put an end to this shortsighted selfishness of the current patent system's "I thought of it first, so it's mine and you can't ever use it." philosophy so we can all move forward. But hey, what do I know? I don't even work for the patent office.