Quit FaceBook.

[Max7]

Facebook: All Your Stuff is Ours, Even if You Quit
February 16, 2009 - 8:24 am PDT - by Stan Schroeder 128 Comments

facebook-logo-spaced.pngThe Consumerist has noticed a seemingly slight but very important (and disturbing) change in Facebook’s terms of service, regarding user-generated content.

In short, all of the content you’ve ever uploaded on Facebook can be used, modified or even sublicensed by Facebook in every possible way - even if you quit the service.

The TOS says the following:

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.

It also used to contain another bit that is now missing.

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.

This is also reinforced by the “Termination” section:

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.

Sure, most users don’t really care (or think they don’t care) about all this, but the idea that you now cannot stop Facebook from using your content should you ever want to is frightening to say the least.
Is Facebook Connect the reason?

Commenter OrtensiaCadmium on Consumerist finds a probable reason for this change in Facebook TOS.

“That’s fairly common language in terms for various sites such as Facebook. While it gives Facebook some far-reaching and scary possibilities, the basic idea is that things you upload may end up residing on servers outside of Facebook’s direct control. These broad rights make it so that you can’t sue Facebook for some cached content on some other server…”

Yes, with Facebook Connect in place, it’s likely that Facebook simply must do this in order to avoid possible lawsuits over content that isn’t even stored by them anymore. However, the same commenter rightfully notices that “…yes, it also means they can sell your photos or use them in advertising with no recompense to you.”
It’s not just your stuff, it’s everyone’s stuff

The possible implications of this TOS change go beyond these concerns. Sure, you can choose not to use Facebook at all, but that doesn’t mean a thing. Someone can still take your photo, slap it on Facebook, and now neither you nor the author of the photo can stop Facebook from using the photo in whichever way they please.

Looking at it globally, millions of people are uploading bits of information on everyone and everything, to a huge online database, and by doing so they’re automatically giving away the rights to use or modify this information to a private corporation. And not only that; they now also waiver the right to ever take it back from it.

Facebook should take a long, deep look into how it treats its users. Until now, users had options with regards to how the data they generated on Facebook was used. Now, they have no options whatsoever, rather than quit the service altogether. It’s a major difference; I’m not going to take it lightly, and neither should you.

Additional New York Times Story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/te...1facebook.html

[Roger]

Isn't face book a "free service?" There is really no such thing as free. If you think about it, anything posted on line is fair game for anyone to grab.

[Max7]

Isn't face book a "free service?" There is really no such thing as free. If you think about it, anything posted on line is fair game for anyone to grab.

I suppose... But why is the CIA investing in F/B?

January 14th, 2008
Facebook and the CIA

Posted by Dennis Howlett @ 4:01 pm

Categories: Enterprise applications, Social computing

Tags: Facebook, Nature, CIA, Tim Hodgkinson, Corporate Governance......, Blogging, Venture Capital, Business Operations, Corporate Law, Internet

In a piece of carefully researched critique, Guardian Unlimited writer Tim Hodgkinson does a masterful job unpacking the politics of Facebook, implying that the company’s backer’s real agenda is the realization of the original American dream:

Here at last is the Enlightenment state longed for since the Puritans of the 17th century sailed away to North America, a world where everyone is free to express themselves as they please, according to who is watching. National boundaries are a thing of the past and everyone cavorts together in freewheeling virtual space. Nature has been conquered through man’s boundless ingenuity.

In the process, Hodgkinson accuses Facebook’s backer and in particular Peter Thiel of using the concepts enshrined in Facebook’s technology for what he sees as dark purposes:

…by his own admission, Thiel is trying to destroy the real world, which he also calls “nature”, and install a virtual world in its place, and it is in this context that we must view the rise of Facebook. Facebook is a deliberate experiment in global manipulation, and Thiel is a bright young thing in the neoconservative pantheon, with a penchant for far-out techno-utopian fantasies. Not someone I want to help get any richer.

Hodgkinson goes much further. Digging deep into the background of board member Jim Breyer asserting that his connections bring Facebook uncomfortably close to the CIA:

Facebook’s most recent round of funding was led by a company called Greylock Venture Capital, who put in the sum of $27.5m. One of Greylock’s senior partners is called Howard Cox, another former chairman of the NVCA, who is also on the board of In-Q-Tel. What’s In-Q-Tel? Well, believe it or not (and check out their website), this is the venture-capital wing of the CIA.

Today, the Twitterspehere was awash with comments from people variously describing Hodgkinson’s piece as a masterful piece of anti-Facebook material:

* Poisy from Italy: I just read the article about Facebook. So is the CIA looking at my stuff?? Thank God I don’t use Facebook that much…
* Frank Edward Nora a podcaster from NJ: who knows… all I know is Facebook gives me the creeps. I don’t like it
* Neville Hobson new media maven: Easy summary of Guardian piece on Facebook: it’s all a right-wing conspiracy with no redeeming value whatsoever and Strip out the sensationalist bias and opinion and the Guardian FB story has some very good points on lack of any real privacy.
* Hugh MacLeod: uber cartoonist: Wow. Best anti-Facebook article I’ve ever read
* Loren Feldman: bad man of video: Awesome read about facebook
* Drew Benvie: rising PR star: That Guardian article on the evilness of Facebook really kicked off a discussion today huh! Lots of influencers seeing a new side to FB.

Interestingly, there was virtually no blog commentary from the US and it certainly hasn’t made *Techmeme - a sure sign that Hodgkinson’s evisceration has not traveled well. At least not yet. Instead, we see a critique of Mark Zuckerberg’s performance on 60 minutes. Kara Swisher of AllThingsD did a great job calling the company to account on issues like Beacon but presenter Leslie Stahl fell short of asking the truly tough questions that many have already voiced on the interwebs. Charlene Li, analyst with Forrester, is largely positive about Facebook, but declared that:

A better question to ask is if Mark and his team have the right level of judgment that’s needed to succeed, especially when it comes to understanding user privacy and advertising sensitivity. This appears to be their repeated blindspot, and they would do well to learn from their mistakes. That’s the core of judgment, which is gained only through experience.

For myself, I thought Zuckerberg looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights, turning in a tame performance that missed on almost all counts. But does it matter? If we are to believe Hodgkinson then it doesn’t - at least not to Facebook:

The creators of the site need do very little bar fiddle with the programme. In the main, they simply sit back and watch as millions of Facebook addicts voluntarily upload their ID details, photographs and lists of their favourite consumer objects. Once in receipt of this vast database of human beings, Facebook then simply has to sell the information back to advertisers, or, as Zuckerberg puts it in a recent blog post, “to try to help people share information with their friends about things they do on the web”.

Maybe so. In the last couple of days, I’ve been spammed by some of my Facebook friends. Having seen what was sent on their behalf I’m convinced a Facebook bot has been at work. I know these people too well to think they would spam me deliberately.

In this blog, I get the chance to expose the shenanigans of the enterprise software vendors. When seen through Hodgkinson’s eyes, companies I like to target look positively tame. It’s not their tactics are any less reprehensible, it is the insidious way Facebook seems to be invading our lives. And with it, the very privacy issues that have been exercising the minds of people like Thomas Otter.

Like it or not, Facebook is going to have a significant impact on enterprise life. Whether that’s directly through the way it advertises or indirectly through the dissemination of information it sells to direct the products and services which are developed on behalf of consumers. It can only be a matter of time before the Facebook metaphor is taken seriously at the business level and someone develops an enterprise version. In this regard, I can’t see Oracle, IBM, SAP or Microsoft standing idly by. Can you?

UPDATE: * A reader advises me the story made Techmeme briefly this am but quickly fell away. I didn’t see that. Apologies.

Dennis Howlett has been providing comment and analysis on enterprise software since 1991. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

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People who read this, also read...

* How to delete your account: Facebook responds (half heartedly)
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* What's wrong with Facebook
* Facebook's neocon links
* facebook.com safety

Source:http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=286

[OU812]

If you put information on there server they should be able to do anything they want with it as long as it is disclosed to you. Lesson here is don't put anything on the web you don't want to give away for free to anyone and everyone.

[Max7]

"...as long as it is disclosed to you..."

[FishPOET]

Everything I type or upload to any site on the internet becomes part of the public domain. I know this before I participate.

[FishPOET]

This was on the home page this morning

[Max7]

Addiction paves the way for power

They just screwed up really, really bad. Thousands of members are not happy with the terms and quitting. Monetizing or not this is precedence setting.

Even after this mornings TOU update they are still going to change their TOS from the original. Facebook should take a long look into how it treats its users. They are counting on user addiction to "go with the flow". I am not addicted. I'm done with them.

Best, Max7

[sarah]

Everything I type or upload to any site on the internet becomes part of the public domain. I know this before I participate.

I think I get what you're saying, but that is not necessarily true. There is an act or law that was passed, but it's slipping my mind right now. Just because you post something online doesn't make it available for people to use as their own. (Of course, coming from a digital artist )

[sarah]

Woo! I love it. This will be a fun one to pass along. Thanks again Maxwell!

[Materdaddy]

To me, the point remains what OU812 mentioned: As long as the terms are disclosed, who cares? If you care, boycott. I'm not boycotting.

Most of the people quitting are the type of people that blindly accept TOS/TOU for any website, purchase or registration and the reason they're "boycotting" or "quitting" is because a few people realized the change and got it on the news, and every other internet board.

Those same people feel like Facebook did something back-handed, while they probably didn't do anything wrong, but update their TOS with some un-friendly terms. If they did do something wrong, hopefully they will pay the price, but I'll still stay signed up.

I'd bet that most of the people on facebook don't care that the ownership of the pictures/content they post on facebook, since most people use it to just post pictures of them at a party or on vacation. I certainly hope they don't care that their "mirror" pictures or "extended arm" pictures aren't theirs anymore... hopefully those all die.

On a somewhat related note, one of the reasons I run my own domains is to remain in "ownership" of most of my content, so I'll still use facebook/myspace/whatever I want. I just don't post much on there.

[Max7]

...I'd bet that most of the people on facebook don't care...

...Or America. Maybe that's why we are in the trouble we are in?

Sheep, out of luck. Oh! the apathy.

Best, Max7

[USMC 0369]

I think I get what you're saying, but that is not necessarily true. There is an act or law that was passed, but it's slipping my mind right now. Just because you post something online doesn't make it available for people to use as their own. (Of course, coming from a digital artist )

[COLOR="Sienna"]You're speaking of the international copyrights laws that say when you post an original work (photos, drawings, graphics, emails, blog posts) it is automatically copyrighted to the originator for 50 years.

Is it enforced much? Nope. But it's still there to protect digital artists, and others, from having their designs ripped off and used by someone else. I don't know where to find it on "the books". But I do know that it's enforcable. Read this, it explains better than I can. http://www.benedict.com/Info/PublicD...licDomain.aspx

Complaints of this are probably what prompted the change in TOS/TOU agreement. Which essentailly seems to have said that if you use FB you agree that everything you put on FB is in "Public Domain". Which would mean I could take a picture from FB, alter it any way I want, republish it as a picture I took. Or take anything from a blog, post it out of contex, and make it appear as if someone was saying something they truly did not intend.[/COLOR]

[Dukes69]

What is a facebook?

[Kodiak Spirit]

I'm with Duke69, I don't do any of this stuff, but when I was running a multiple BBS deal outta my apartment in San Diego My business partner at the time said, "there is no such thing as intellectual property rights now that the computer can send, store, transfer and steal whatever there is to be had."

That was back in 1992... it doesnt matter what media you use, if it can be put online, it's free to the public for those that want it for free. right or wrong, it sucks for artist or every type everywhere.