This article in the New York Times caught my attention today:
Facebook’s Users Ask Who Owns Information
Apparently there has been a change in the fine print "Terms of Service" on the ubiquitous social networking site. The brouhaha started when the Consumerist blog posted a feisty entry challenging a recent unpublicized change to Facebook's "terms of use".The offending words:
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…
This language was not new, but a sentence at the end of the paragraph has been removed, which stated:
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.
from which Chris Walters at the Consumerist concluded:
Make sure you never upload anything you don't feel comfortable giving away forever, because it's Facebook's now.
Facebook has responded with assurances that Users Control Content.
The fuss conjures up worries that Facebook users will wind up like the fashion designer Halston, who lost the right to use his own name, having conveyed that right to Revlon.
This concern does seem to me a bit overblown. Facebook needs a license to use your content in order to work. Technically, someone is storing, copying, transmitting, and displaying your content every time you send an email. Facebook is all about you using Facebook to share information with others. As long as Facebook continues to respect the privacy options you selected, you should be OK.
