Was it only last week that I wrote about joining FaceBook? Well now I have to report that I am cutting the content syndicated from Flametoad.com over to my FaceBook profile. It turns out that I should have read the fine print. Legal Andrew points out that FaceBook Isn’t Private And 7 Other Things You Should Know about the FaceBook Terms of Service . From my perspective, the most important part comes from from the TOS section titled User Content Posted on the Site. The emphasis added is mine.
When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. 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.
So whether I’m posting a photo of my tadpoles or writing a thought-provoking essay, FaceBook says they own the rights to reproduce it and make money off it without further compensation to yours truly. Granted, I may be exhibiting an inflated ego if I think anyone would want to reproduce anything from my FaceBook profile, but so be it. If I won the lottery or published the next Harry Potter, suddenly the content on my profile might seem a lot more desirable to FaceBook. So until they change their Terms of Service, my participation on FaceBook will be limited to social activities like communicating with friends. I’m sorry for the about-face, but it just seems like the prudent thing to do.
Popularity: 24% [?]
Actually. Thanks for the heads up.
You might enjoy my recent post about how facebook uses terrible defaults for friendspam
I saw it. I have less than two dozen “friends”, so even with the default settings I only seem to get one or two e-mails a week. If I had hundred or more people on my friends list–or if they were more active–I’d certainly be taking the settings a lot more seriously.