For the most part, I remember sites like Facebook asking you for your e-mail username and password, then logging in as you, and scraping the data out: I don't remember it being because "email providers like Gmail [] allowed users to easily export their contact lists".
I think you misunderstand what's occurring. Facebook wasn't "scraping" anything; Gmail provides a simple API and UX to allow users to export their information. In fact, Google called Facebook out for their lack of reciprocity in this area last year, and has experimented with blocking export directly to Facebook: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/11/google-facebook-data/
...and yet, I remember it being a serious issue that sites like Facebook were asking for users' usernames and passwords to other sites, the disclosure of which is a violation of the terms of service of even Gmail. I do not remember Facebook offering this service as "upload your contact information", at least during the time when they were growing to prominence (important for your argument).
I don't see how that's at all relevant. Yes, of course you need to be logged in to export your Gmail contacts, but none of that implies that they're being "scraped" or retrieved in anything other than a readily accessible form. The simple fact is that Google has supported this kind of contact export for several years. Facebook has long benefited from it, but explicitly prohibits anything comparable on their end (i.e. not providing it themselves and intentionally breaking browser extensions, apps, or any third-party connectors).
If you handed my website your Facebook username and password in the same way that users were handing Facebook their Gmail username and password, I could easily pull a list of all of your friends. The point here is that your insistence on quibbling over whether something is in a "readily accessible form" makes no sense in light of the mechanism that Facebook (and similar sites) were (and often still are) using to get your e-mail contacts: by logging in /as you/.
Seriously? You're actually trying to make this argument? Sorry, but it's not worth my time to debate this with someone so disastrously ignorant as to think he can scrape Facebook profiles without getting throttled, banned, blocked, and litigated to hell and back.
