It's 2008. Do You Know Where You Data Is?

First off, its 2008! W00t!
Recently, Robert Scoble, blogger and self proclaimed technical evangelist (insert snarky comment here), lost all access to his Facebook data by trying to obtain his data. how? why? He scraped. gasp! Oh but its not just about owning your data, its about portable data! It's freedom, baby! He joined Dataportability.org after his cease and desist letter (insert second snarky comment here).
Scoble is just one of many trying to define/redefine the playing field of social data. Some feel that Scoble's effort symbolizes the undercurrent of feelings that users have that the data on social network sites is theirs. Still others come down hard on Scoble arguing that a user agreement is a legal document that should be respected. Is this civil disobedience internet-style or just an obnoxious way to generate blog posts?
Wired lays out the pros and cons of data portability nicely here. But I would like to add my two cents. This debate intrigues me for multiple reasons as a sociologist (yes, all you CS bastards majors we too are on the internet). For academic purposes, the social network is the holy grail for myself and many others doing empirical research in this area. But knowing how much information can be triangulated via the graph and I am not sure that I want every Tom, Dick, and Harry start-up having access to mine. Yes, interoperability is sexy but even sociologists take econ classes. What is the incentive to share? Social network data is hands down the best way to match advertising and we are just at the beginning. Why should MS Facebook pay big $ to store data that other's can easily use to make big $?
So, what side of the fence is Brand Maven on?
The Wired article discusses specifically the business logic of scraping (what our friend Scoble did). The author suggests that it's a precarious plan at best depending on external data for your business. hmmm. Really? Then what the f&^$ is a search engine? (And yes, I am too prude to use profanity on the internet.) All an engine does is match you to other's pages. Its a form of scraping but we all agree that it has a purpose and is useful. I know at first glance it may seem like an extreme point but I assure you, it's not. The internet is based on connectivity and data portability. So, I cautiously come down for freeing the social network data.
Internet, it's a brave new world, again.