Facebook ownership rights issue settled… for now
We were but one of many blogs that sounded a warning Monday about Facebook quietly changing its terms of service to essentially claim ownership of anything you post there.
Facebook, naturally, claims it was doing nothing of the sort. And after an extreme amount of pressure from its users, the blogosphere and The Consumerist blog — where we heard about this; that site is owned by the fine folks at Consumer Reports magazine — Facebook backed down Wednesday, reposted its original terms and pledged to make itself more clear in the future.
Brad Stone and Brian Stelter of the New York Times report:
[Chris Kelly, Facebook’s chief privacy officer] says that [the Consumerist Blog] made “substantial misinterpretations,” including missing a crucial provision that made Facebook’s license to members’ material subject to the user’s individual privacy settings. He conceded, however, that Facebook did not effectively communicate that nuance.
We beg to differ. If the onus is on users to go in and tweak their settings in order to retain legal rights over their own content, then Facebook ought to be obligated to notify users of this change. Ebay sends out e-mail every time it tweaks its terms of service; one has to believe Facebook can find a way, too.
The Times‘ Saul Hansell writes:
Facebook’s about-face might well be a significant victory for the English language, which has been losing a long running battle with the legal profession. Lawyers are trained to give their clients the greatest protection against claims, so they write agreements to grant broad privileges and impose narrow limitations. This came up last week too when the Federal Trade Commission chastised Internet companies for cryptic privacy policies.
Similarly, Facebook’s user agreement didn’t really reflect what it did and didn’t do or plan to do with the information from its users.
“We think that a lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective,” [Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg] wrote today. The new version, he promised, “will be written clearly in language everyone can understand.”
Besides, Hansell, writes — what commercial value could most of content at Facebook possibly have anyway?
…turn their goofy photos into a coffee table book and adapt their wall postings into a Broadway play. (”25 Random Things,” starring Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, and a cast of flying sheep?)
Those of us in the media know better. VizEds CEO Robb Montgomery, for example, yanked all his content from Facebook. He’ll still use it for networking, but he’ll park videos and writings on other sites.
We, on the other hand, aren’t quite ready to do that yet.
Be warned, though — terms of service or not, once you’ve posted something — anything — online, at Facebook, Flickr or anywhere else — it’s out there and available for a) archiving, b) searching, or c) ripping off. Whether you like it or not.