Facebook have made alterations to their Terms of Use which now states that anything you put onto the site at any point in time – they can do with as they please.
Previously, when you closed your account, any rights to your own content would expire - now it still all belongs to them. It means the site can legally sell your content or use them in advertising with no zero recompense to you.
You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.
All of the above has not changed, however two lines following this paragraph have been removed:
You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.
In addition the social network has added:
The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook Service: Prohibited Conduct, User Content, Your Privacy Practices, Gift Credits, Ownership; Proprietary Rights, Licenses, Submissions, User Disputes; Complaints, Indemnity, General Disclaimers, Limitation on Liability, Termination and Changes to the Facebook Service, Arbitration, Governing Law; Venue and Jurisdiction and Other.
Essentially, do not upload anything that you wouldn’t be happy splashed across newspapers across the country. Do not upload anything which you wouldn’t be happy having used in some form of public advertisement or publication. If you plan on running for President, Prime Minster or any other public figure – get out and ban anyone from using your photo on there!
via Consumerist
**Update**
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has written an official response on the matter. Details can be found here.
Wellsphere did the same thing to bloggers and it turned into a scandal recently. http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23wellsphere
Facebook could come under fire for this.
Is this their business model?
What about photos that I’ve taken, that I know other people have uploaded to facebook?
Extremely unhappy facebook “unfan” here. What to do, what to do?
Nonetheless, I am shutting down my feeds and content until such time that facebook reverts with clarification and hopefully a retraction of the “odious” legalese. Trouble is the implications for all social media. Going under the radar until further notice.
You make a good point, Dave.
..Dave, good work. You saved me writing a post like yours.
Some people are trying to “live under the radar” and I suggest to those folks that they shun social networking sites — most of us who are there are working full speed to be seen and heard. I’m not on Facebook (and Myspace and LinkedIn and Live Journal) to keep private. I’m sharing.
And I don’t want my favorite social media platform mired in costly and frivolous lawsuits rather than spending their money improving the platform.
—v
Oops. Looks like I haven’t been using my reading skills so well.
It’s not Facebook’s doing? LMAO. Oh POOR Facebook!
Two details:
1) In the quoted sections, Facebook does *not* claim ownership of anything you post. They claim a license to do anything they damn well please with it, but that is not the same as ownership. As the owner, you can revoke their license to use your materials at any time by removing it from their site. (Ignoring, for the moment, the claim that their license survives account termination, at which point it could become non-trivial for you to remove it.) If they actually took ownership, then *they* would be able to revoke *your* rights to use the materials, which would indeed be evil.
2) This doesn’t look like an attempt to pull anything shady to me, it’s just standard modern legal practice of “claim to own everything and make them talk you down”. Which is deplorable and probably evil, but it’s not Facebook’s doing. Their lawyers have most likely just told them that they have to make these claims to protect themselves from the possibility that someone might sue them for the corner of their profile appearing in a TV commercial or something like that. They’re just making ridiculous claims to establish a defense against anyone who attempts an even more ridiculous lawsuit.
Do you seriously think that Facebook is attempting to move into a new business model of selling their members’ content? As soon as they tried to actually do that, people would leave in droves. It would be corporate suicide.
They’re just doing what the prevailing legal climate requires to ensure that they can display their pages to visitors anywhere in the world (and, optionally, place ads on those pages) without being sued. It absolutely is a bad thing that they need to do this, but that’s primarily the fault of the copyright regime and the overly-litigious lawyers who support it.
I think they just shot themselves in the head.
It’s the naked statement of intent behind these terms that really are the worst – whether they could enforce this in court, I doubt – but this really is beyond the pale.
I just deleted most of my photos from facebook, and I think I’ll limit my logins now – facebook had already become something less than useless, and this means I’ll not share any more content beyond that to which I add the phrase “facebook stole this content from me”.
Beacon didnt seem to dishearten any users tho.
Lets hope they don’t use my image to flog government rebate checks, condoms, or multi-tiered “win this prize” crud that facebook has for advertising. I would hate to have to explain to my boss that my image was co-opted and there was nothing I could do about it, no I am not really involved in a ponzi scheme honestly boss.
Those damn electro fascists!
LOL – if you deactivate your account there’s a small space to exaplin yourself. If you delete it, there isn’t.
I was looking around Facebook for contact information to let Facebook know that I disagree with their new terms of service and that I’d like to make use of Facebook under the old terms of service or at least have my account deleted under those TOS.
I can’t seem to find any contact info though. Any help?
I can’t help but wonder if this is Facebook writing its own obituary. That’s a very sad turn in my mind, because I know a ton of people that will be far less willing to share their lives now that the information shared is not owned by them anymore.
This is beginning to feel really Big Brother.
Time to take a look at Virb.com again, methinks.
I removed everything before deleting my account. The sad part is that if they are entitled to do this (and I think the jury’s out on that) it woon’t have helped… they can still use the stuff.
The fact that they retain the images is beyond doubt… Even after removing all pictures and all tags, I was being offered pictures of myself to crop for a profile image.
I just removed everything from my facebook account… this sux…Why can’t they just leave a good thing alone…
I am glad I am not yet on Facebook c”,
everything… hmm…
what about the content i publish?
my notes and blog posts and youtube videos?
sorry facebook… won’t be getting my password anytime soon! lol…
not a nice move, really.
Not only does this “allow” Facebook to sell your pictures AND personal messages to anybody, including prospective employers (or agencies serving them) but it also rather neatly removes that need for law enforcement agencies to get any kind of warrant for seizing material.
I cannot possibly see how facebook can regain my “loyalty” to the medium after this. Let this be a lesson to the next generation “social service” which is sure to follow. I have trustfully been transparent up until now, but now I’m considering closing the curtains. I have shut down my tumblr and twitter feeds and deleted most apps. Ill-considered legalese, ill-considered.
You’re right, BUT this means you’re giving them ownership of YOUR stuff.
Basically, they can use any of your pictures or even imported blog posts and publish them anywhere.
I’m also there to ‘be seen’, but not to have my intellectual property rights (etc) violated.
This may be the first chapter in the obituary, lol. An interesting point is that many FB groups use corporate logos. Some of them (obviously not all) will have been placed there by those corporations. I’d love to see a court battle between Facebook and Microsoft after Facebook sold the MS brand logo to someone, lmao. I think I might actually be cheering Bill for once!