Be Careful What You Say Or Place On FaceBook

[Scot Standke]

Hey Warriors,

It turns out the FaceBook changed their TOS a while back and some of the language has me a bit worried to say the least.
.
"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.


In other words, while it doesn't actually own your photos, scribblings and status updates — you do — Facebook can do whatever it wants with it, whenever it wants, in order to promote itself or create or sell ads.
Theoretically, it can even "license" a picture of your kids for use in a third party's ad campaign."


What are your thoughts on this?


Here is the entire article I quoted:


FOXNews.com - Facebook Membership May Be Forever - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News


This has me seriously rethinking anything I would ever put on ANY social site.


Scot

[Michael Mayo]

Wow!

Scott, Thanks for the heads up. I'll need to go back and reread all the
TOS's again to see what has changed. ZZzzz....ZZzzz...If I can stay awake
doing so that is, some are pretty dry and repetitive.

Have a Great Day!
Michael

Originally Posted by Scot Standke

Hey Warriors,

It turns out the FaceBook changed their TOS a while back and some of the language has me a bit worried to say the least.
.
"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.


In other words, while it doesn't actually own your photos, scribblings and status updates — you do — Facebook can do whatever it wants with it, whenever it wants, in order to promote itself or create or sell ads.
Theoretically, it can even "license" a picture of your kids for use in a third party's ad campaign."


What are your thoughts on this?


Here is the entire article I quoted:


FOXNews.com - Facebook Membership May Be Forever - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News


This has me seriously rethinking anything I would ever put on ANY social site.


Scot

[Andy LaPointe]

Say bye bye to any sort of personal privacy...

The Internet was always moving to this point and if this is in fact the case and if this is how photos can be used, it will be interesting to see what happens to copyright and IP property if everyone looks at the Internet at 100% public domain.

This line of think could lead to the following...

Since the Internet is public domain and since people post information on the Internet this means anything posted on the Internet is public domain.

Wow... I guess logic classes back in college are really paying off now
That is a scary thought

[Angela V. Edwards]

That's actually pretty scary, Scott. Aren't the photographers usually the copyright holders to any photos?

[Jill Carpenter]

I was on FB for a while, couldn't figure out for the life of me what the point was as I had like all of 3 friends for the longest time.

Finally have some "friends" now but kept forgetting that my twitter feed is linked to my FB and everyone was seeing all my wacky posts there. Hysterically, I get comments w/o even logging in all day.

Anyway, once you put anything up on the internet it's just not private any more.

I don't care what social group you are a part of.

The closest you will get to privacy is making a group on yahoo, or yuku, etc and setting it to private. And even then there's still no guarantee.

Someone once told me, if more than one person knows something - it's not really a secret anymore.

Big Brother is here!

I've given up on anything private on the web. Heck, I am a wreck some days and shooting video of myself in my pj's still and posting it. LOL - won't they enjoy that when I'm 6 feet under.

[Justin Mandel]

Ouch.

I wonder what percentage of Facebook user's would STOP using Facebook if they knew this?

I know that I will cut back on my usage if not outright stop it?

And I will go ahead when i have time and forward that to my friends so they can make their own decision.

Kinda sounds like the changes with eBay that was instituted in that so many Powersellers left after changes were made...

[Habitat]

Meh it's whatever. Good info though thanks a lot

[Kevin Riley]

Too late. They already sold those nude photos of me to Playgirl magazine.

[artwebster]

Sorry, Kevin, they bought them to create a video tutorial in "How not to pose nude".

Apart from that, these terms "subject to your privacy settings" should come as no surprise since privacy settings should give you a rough idea of just how safe your intelectual property is.

As ar as copyright goes, unless Facebook creates a brand new product from your contribution, you still retain copyright however, since you give everybody full permission to view and embed your videos, it isn't worth much.

[Tsnyder]

This is pretty much a non-issue... apparently you didn't
read this when you registered for the Warrior Forum...

"When you post information to the Warrior Forum, communicate with us, send us information, or provide content to us or provide any content (including but not limited to text, images, graphics, sounds, etc.) for use or display, privately or publicly on or through the Warrior Forum, you own your content. You own and are responsible for your words. However, you grant the Warrior Forum a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable right to exercise all copyright, moral, and publicity rights in the content, in any manner whatsoever, in any media or form now known or which may be created in the future, including in other works and forms not associated with Warrior Forum.

This is standard TOS language in every large forum or membership
site I've ever seen.

Tsnyder

[RobRamos]

Double check on this but I believe copyright law states, that a person can be visually or audibly utilized separately to promote a non-profit business. However the two cannot be used in conjunction. Also if any profit is to be made from the campaign then said person must by law have given expressed permission up to and even requesting, payment for use of their identity to promote such product. Anything other may violate copyright law. Someone please verify this for me, although I think it's fairly accurate.

[JohnMcCabe]

Originally Posted by Angela V. Edwards

That's actually pretty scary, Scott. Aren't the photographers usually the copyright holders to any photos?

It isn't a matter of who holds the copyright. The originator continues to own the copyright.

The way I read the terms, you are granting a permanent, non-revocable license with such broad terms that it's tantamount to co-ownership.

[jameswatson]

...yep, there are lots of college kids who are going to get a big shock when their frat party photos are featured as part of a new-term Facebook membership promotion campaign...

[Scot Standke]

Originally Posted by jameswatson

...yep, there are lots of college kids who are going to get a big shock when their frat party photos are featured as part of a new-term Facebook membership promotion campaign...

OK, that's were I have trouble understanding this.

Using your 'frat party' analogy, what if I'm at a party
and make an ass of myself and my buddy takes my
pic and posts it on his MySpace page?

What right would MySpace have to plaster my idiotic
image everywhere? Not that they ever would, but I
can see the lawyers already chompin at the bit on
this one.

The last thing I wanna see is my drunken stupor on
the same page as Rileys Playgirl pics

Scot

[TiAndrine]

I do appreciate the reminder Scot. We are all "hanging it out there" moreso and moreso these days. I'm starting to also realize that what one says/posts online will likely never ever go away...no matter who owns it.

Will I want to be reminded years from now what I am putting online today?

Publishers beware, even of ourselves! :-)

Tim Owen
"The Mastermind and Implementation Coach"

[Scot Standke]

Well, it seems that FaceBook took heed to the outrage on the
new TOS.

They have done an about face and changed the wording.

"Just a day after standing by the revisions, the company said
it would scrap the new policy and return to its previous terms
of service in a notice to its 175 million users on its Web Site"

FOXNews.com - Facebook Does About-Face on Privacy Change - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News

Scot

[rafaelapolinario]

Thanks for sharing this info. Kinda scary, Next time we really should be cautious about the things that we're uploading on the web.

[Roey Pimentel]

I see this issue with a little different spin. For the most part, none of the info/images are (ever) going to matter, however, suppose for example, you have a really great photo and want to enter it in a contest, or publish it somewhere else. The problem may come in where you can't do that because now you can't give the new entity (contest, publisher...) EXCLUSIVE rights to that image. Any thoughts on that concept from our Internet Marketing friends who are also lalwyers? Just curious...

[Martin Luxton]

Scott,

This whole thing is a minefield.

Let's say you take a photo of some friends and put it on Facebook. Facebook then uses the photo. Your friends then sue Facebook because they haven't signed releases for your original photo. Then Facebook sues you because you uploaded a photo you didn't have the right to upload. Then, one of your friends thinks "What the hell, we aren't that close. I can sue him too and make some money."

So the big question is "How many people who upload videos and images to Facebook have signed release forms from all the people they have captured on camera?"

Martin

[whawk57]

Hi
Since when was there any privacy on the internet anyway?
smoking, copying and pasting lol I bet you don't even worry too much about copyrights.... what about torrents and rapidshare? Ok then, just tell me one real safe place? NONE I bet. Cookies, anybody? lol

[Stu784]

Thanks for the heads up just had a read of the report.

[Kay King]

Scott -

Facebook may have been responding to cable news reports rather than user outrage. One of the 24 hr stations made a big deal over this yesterday.

The news mentioned a "group of over 30,000" Facebook users threatening to leave Facebook - which is not many considering the number of members.

What struck me was the "threatening to quit" yet no mass exodus of members due to these terms.

kay

[Ephrils]

It will likely cause some to leave. I understand the uproar.

I rarely used them anyway. If they want to go all fascist, let them rot.

[mookinman]

I just found this message on my facebook homepage....
"Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised. For more information, visit the Facebook Blog.

If you want to share your thoughts on what should be in the new terms, check out our group Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities."

[Eric Stanley]

Yes, it has been revoked and restored to the original TOS for the time being. Looks like a big "oh Sh*t" on facebook's end. It never ceases to amaze me that "big" companies think the masses are completely oblivious.

[jacktackett]

Originally Posted by jameswatson

...yep, there are lots of college kids who are going to get a big shock when their frat party photos are featured as part of a new-term Facebook membership promotion campaign...

or have to answer during a job interview. Its a standard OP for me now - when I'm interviewing someone for my company I do a search to see what they've posted out there. Things can come back to haunt you...

Lets face it, with google and the way back machine anthing publically available (ie not hidden behind a proxy server or password protected sites) can be index.

I can trace my internet usage back to usenet around '92 (luckily my rantings on Compuserve and Usenet before then don't seem to have been recorded! )

IANAL, but this has more to do with contract law than copyright law - but the rules can and do change at any time.

As for your friends taking pictures and placing them online - that's a good question and one a lawyer really needs to address.

Hum, maybe I should copyright, trademark, AND Patent my arse......wonder if that would cover everything ?

best,
--Jack

[Craig Fenton]

Hi Scot:

Hope you are well. Sometime Tuesday morning either Yahoo or MSN had a quick blurb about the backlash with Facebook and the change of policy. It seems that they have agreed to go back to the previous provisions. The thanks should go to a consumer group that got involved and tens of thousands of members that demanded they make the right decision.

I am sorry for not saving the link.

Hope it is easy to find with Google or even on the Facebook site.

All the best!!

[GarrieWilson]

Originally Posted by Rhonda148

This is REALLY frightening to say the least!

Maybe you should read the entire thread...

or are you a one line post count builder?

[daj]

I thought everyone knew facebook.com was a CIA operation to begin with?
Watch the video: albumoftheday.com/facebook

[KatPD]

Hmm... I hear many people complain about STALKERbook policies but they don't remove themselves as they are in contact with so many people they don't want to loose the convenience of being able to quickly message friends or view photos. I don't think its right to get people hooked and then start changing all the policies...