Have you seen the revised Facebook terms of service? Here it is thanks to the Consumerist:
“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.”
Their rights now no longer expire when you leave Facebook, as was the case before.
I wonder if that applies to things you link to such as your blog posts?
I also wonder if that applies if you blog posts are re-posted on Facebook through apps such as Networked Blogs or other means on your profile?
What if the material is copyrighted by you or others?
I guess they can take your picture and draw mustaches and beards on it also.
Most content that is placed on the Web is tossed into the public domain but this might be a bit different. Facebook says we should trust them to not abuse this. I understand the logic of what Zuckerberg wrote but I still am not sure that they need to go as far as they did. I certainly assume no privacy about anything I place on the Web, ownership seems a different issue. What do you think?
Post Script: As you may know Facebook changed its mind in the face of opposition and returned to the old TOS. Perhaps it was this blog that served as the tipping point :)
that's ridiculous. This will prove costly for the Face book if they cant edit the TOS .
Posted by: ramakrishna | February 17, 2009 at 11:10 AM
they cant do that .....facebook s**cks
Posted by: sethu | February 17, 2009 at 11:11 AM
Hey
sory to write to you like this, but i could not find the contact form. I really like your blog and i was wondering if you would maybe like a link exchange with my website www.sayeconomy.com . My site has many good articles and gets around 1300 different visitors each day. I think we would both benefit out of this exchange alot. We would get higher position in search engines and many new visitors from each others economy sites.
Well let me know on [email protected] . I would really like a link exchange with your blog (i like it alot).
Thank you in advance for your reply.
Cheers,
Matt
Posted by: Economy | February 17, 2009 at 04:26 PM
Agree with the reaction to the new TOS, but felt the response by Zuckenberg was good. I posted about it on my blog yesterday, along with some tips for Facebook and other companies who may be involved in managing CGM. We've done a lot of work in this area, and these companies need to learn to trust their user community a bit more, if they do they can even be leveraged to keep moderation costs down etc.
Post here: http://www.tomhcanderson.com/2009/02/18/we-the-people-of-facebook/
Tom H. C. Anderson
Managing Partner
Anderson Analytics, LLC
Posted by: Tom H. C. Anderson | February 19, 2009 at 02:38 PM
Tom Thanks for your comment and the link. You raise some good points. In the end they reversed themselves. However, I think the reason for the change was reasonable, they just did not handle it well. It is not the first time that they have done PR badly. I also think that people want to jump on them because they have been so successful. Bill
Posted by: Bill Ives | February 19, 2009 at 04:35 PM
Tom - I laos liked your blog and added it to my list. Bill
Posted by: Bill Ives | February 19, 2009 at 04:39 PM
sounds like Facebook made the same mistake that Google made with their Chrome (web browser) end user license agreement
Posted by: coffee | February 22, 2009 at 07:23 PM