Edit: From Section 4(8) of the Facebook TOS [1]:
"You will not share your password (or in the case of developers, your secret key), let anyone else access your account, or do anything else that might jeopardize the security of your account."
It's impossible for something like Facebook to use a whitelist model for determining what you use to interact with their service, and they can't retroactively add things to their blacklist. They usually have to rely on generic rules about causing harm to the service, but then it's no longer a pure whim.
A lot of software licenses have a clause that basically allows the licensor to revoke the license on a whim.
A big problem with our legal system is that it favors those with more money in every way - the rich can lever more cases, better cases, more often. They can afford to appeal at every level, to pay lawyers to look for hundreds of little loopholes. And they are essentially immune to being sued because not only can nobody afford to even begin procedures, once they do, all the more enriched party needs to do is fend off attacks long enough for their opponents' funds to run out.
The legal system is not the only institution affected by this.
Several lower level judges disagreed with you. Although I think that the CANSPAM act ought not apply, there is no basis to claim that this was clearly settled law being ignored to make this into a malicious action.
Facebook claimed[0] that emails it sent to its users were misleading, partly, because Facebook inserted "Thanks,\nThe Facebook Team" into messages it sent out as a result of Power.com's actions.
Facebook claimed[0],
64. The message, drafted by Power.com, is signed by "The Facebook Team", which is both misleading and false.
[0] http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/technology/2009010...
[1] https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2016/07/12/1...
It's clear to me that this was a spam/phishing message.
1. Comes from @facebookmail.com
2. Signed "The Facebook Team"
3. Includes only links to facebook.
4. In the footer, "Want to control which messages you receive from facebook..." facebook link.
--- Now, they obviously created a facebook event as a promotion and invited people on facebook to that event in order to generate those messages, so there is a bit of a grey area, but it's clearly a power.com email and there's no message of power.com other than:
Event: Bring 100 Friends and win 100 bucks
What: Reunion
Host: Power
Start Time: date
End Time: date
Where: Power
--- It's an unethical use of Facebook's systems at the very least, and spells out a pretty big hole (hopefully filled by now) that opens facebook users up to scams because the originator is obfuscated.
As far as I can tell from these documents, Power setup a Facebook event, then Facebook added it's own text (eg. "The Facebook Team") to the event message and sent it as an email to its own users. Then, Facebook took down Vachani based on those emails.
Here is Orin Kerr writing about Power Ventures: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
1) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...