I honestly don't see this change as such a big deal. Before the update you were giving Facebook the right to use any content you posted for as long as it existed on a Facebook page, and most of us never think to go back and remove old content. I don't mean to sound callous and I do understand how the change could have an impact. If you posted a picture of yourself draped over a toilet after your 21st birthday party went terribly wrong, it was nice to know that when you came to your senses and removed the image it would be gone forever. That is no longer the case, and I can understand how knowing Facebook has that image in an archive somewhere and can trot it out at anytime could be unsettling. But the bottom line is you should be thinking about what you're sharing to begin with. License or no license, stuff gets around and your best bet is to always assume anything you post is going to be out there forever.
But back to the Terms of Use change and what really alarmed me. How about this new passage: "(b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising." (Full disclosure:, I can't confirm that this is a new passage in the latest update — just that the change was made sometime between December 31, 2007 and February 4th, 2009. It's definitely the first time I've read it, though.) To me, this is huge. Consider an aspiring model who has a few images of herself on her Facebook page. Her image is her currency, and Facebook is saying they can take one of her photos and use it, gratis, in an ad campaign. At least, that's how I'm reading things (do keep in mind I'm not a lawyer). They could take a comment I make on someone's "Wall" and print it anywhere: "Peter Smith says Brand X works best" conveniently leaving out the end of my quote " out of this selection of really bad software." Trust someone who has been misquoted in this way in the past. It's a bad thing to not have the opportunity to approve quotes attributed directly to you.
And what smells rottenest about this whole deal is what comes first in the Terms of Use: "We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change or delete portions of these Terms at any time without further notice. Your continued use of the Facebook Service after any such changes constitutes your acceptance of the new Terms." So they can (and apparently do) change the terms without any kind of notification to us, the users. That's why you (and I) weren't aware of the February 4th change until yesterday when The Consumerist ran the story.
So apparently it's too late to save ourselves: Facebook already owns everything we've posted up to this point. And they can use our names and images in whatever way they choose to. Keep this in mind going forward. This still might be a good time to revisit your Facebook page and remove anything you don't want them exploiting. As for me, I'm going to go take down those photos of our guinea pigs before they end up in some Peruvian gourmet magazine.
[Update: Mark Zuckerberg has a blog post up clarifying Facebook's intentions towards your content. On Facebook, People Own and Control Their Information. Lets hope the ToU get another update to reflect the information in this post.]
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http://www.facebook.com/home.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=49831842869&ref=mffacebook group against the new terms of use
Be careful what you put out there!
There is nothing personal about the‘Personal Computer’
Pay close attention to what you are looking at or putting out on the web, Facebook, and MySpace these days! Noting is sacred. Everything you do can be seen by another person. There is entirely too much information about too many things about you on the computer.
Advertising is overwhelming. I am tired of ‘pop ups’ and other scam messages I didn’t ask for. Being bombarded with offers of crap I don’t need can be very frustrating. Why does my computer have to save everything I do on the hard drive? For whom? I would like to have the choice of saving what I want to save and not what the technogeeks and the government thinks. This device can get you into very serious trouble. It can be confiscated by the authorities and viewed by others who can use this information against you in your job pursuit, a court of law or worse, steal your identity.
Anyone who believes a password protects you is living in a dream world. Any 13 year old kid can get into your computer in a flash, just ask them. Storing all your financial information and personal things on this ‘tattle tailer’ is at best dumb and dangerous. We are no longer insulated from making mistakes and being able to talk our way through them. Now the computer documents our humanistic foibles and we don’t even think about it. There are those who will spend hours on the net only to disown their families and isolate themselves from everyone. I know people who are on the computer all day, and for what reason? They need to get a life.
We spend thousands of dollars to purposely isolate ourselves from our families and even our work associates. Computers in the work place have taken on a new mantra as well. Recent studies showed that almost 80% of employees on the work site computer spend an hour or more a day on personal searches and generating personal E mails. Managers who used to walk around to see the progress being made by their staff are anchored to their desk all day in an effort to write ‘neat’ reports to the higher Directors who also spend their entire day on the computer doing the same thing as well. This is nuts.
We are lost in a sea of bologna and inefficiencies never before experienced. We spend a good portion of our day on the computer and our every keystroke can be monitored. We as humans have become somewhat stupid and naive in our pursuit of happiness. Remember, the computer is always a two way machine. Unfortunately the person on the other end may not be who you’d like them to be. Think about it!
It may be time to re evaluate your priorities and even consider destroying your one eyed tattler. We don’t need all this BS to survive. All we need is a computer that computes and an internet that doesn’t track our every move and usage or capture our personal information. “The faster we go the slower we get”.
The Microsoft Prayer
Bill Gates is my shepherd, I shall not rest. He leadith me down the path to the keyboard,
He restoreith my hard drive. With my flash drive and I pod he comforts me.
Yeah though I walk through the the valley of megabytes, I fear no evil, for Bill is with me. . .
Surely Gates and Dell will follow me for the rest of my life and I’ll be forced to dwell in the House of the geeks forever.
Amen
rights grab by facebook
FB has been grabbing rights for a long timesee http://www.jmg-galleries.com/blog/2008/02/27/facebooks-rights-grab-how-far-does-it-go/
Now it just got worse