As I understand it, you're not setting the spin on the entangled particle - you're just measuring it, and once you've done that, the entanglement is broken. It's just that if you measure the other particle's spin on the same axis, it will be the same or opposite (depending on how the entanglement was established). In real life, there's no known way to use entangled particles to communicate faster than light, although you can use them to encrypt subluminal communications. I believe it works like generating a one-time pad on the fly. One neat thing, though: If Alice and Bob and an entangled pair, and Bob and Carol have another entangled pair, Bob can use the latter pair to send his half of his connection with Alice to Carol, so the end result is Alice and Carol sharing an entangled pair. (Bob is now left out of the loop, assuming he doesn't have more shared bits with Alice or Carol.)