Change in Facebook T&Cs
Those with a Facebook account may be interested to learn of an update to the Terms & Conditions applied to your content. At the beginning of February, Facebook basically assumed an “irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense)” to do what they want with any content you put up there, and to use “your name, likeness and image” for whatever they want.
The big change however, is that they can do this forever. Previously, if you terminated your Facebook account, all their rights ceased at the same time. This is no longer the case.
This probably doesn’t matter for most people – it’s just a bit of fun social networking – but you might want to think twice about posting any photos or creative content. There’s a more detailed explanation of it all on the MarketingVox website.
I’ve been reading the firestorm of comments about this change in TOS and I agree — If one is going to post photos or other creative works on Facebook — one needs to think of them like Microsoft — and be cautious about what is posted there.
Facebook honchos have not enjoyed the controversy and are seeking to minimize the response — here is one such attempt at mitigation.
Bottom line: Any photos posted here or on any of the FPI-owned sites are aggressively protected by our staff. This a period of revolution and it is interesting to see what will happen.
Well, this was a fast reversal — perhaps Facebook management is smarter than I gave them credit for. As of late last night, they are reinstating the previous TOS. Here is the official blog post about that!
Ha! You beat me to it. Yep, when I opened my Facebook page just a moment ago, there it is at the top of the page: “we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.”
And I may be being my usual naive self here, but I thought Zuckenberg’s blog entry in the link you provided above was a reasonable explanation of the situation.
I thought Mark’s 1st response was too ambigious and I was still a tad concerned — and obviously he and the rest of the inner circle at Facebook had similar concerns. It’s actually kind of refreshing that the social media universe could have such an impact on a company. But yeah, it is an interesting and brave new world out here.
M
Well, they’re nothing if not responsive. While I won’t claim to understand how it will work in practice, Facebook are making all the right noises about “doing things differently” and, essentially, giving users far more of a say in how the whole concept progresses. Details are in Mark Zuckerberg’s blog here.
Just to keep a sense of perspective, regular Facebook users might appreciate this piece from the British satirical website, Daily Mash.