Facebook: Relax, we won't sell your photos
On an otherwise placid holiday weekend, one blog's commentary on a change to Facebook's terms of service created a firestorm of banter on the Web: does the social network claim ownership to any user content on the site, even if the user deletes it?
Facebook reorganized its terms of service last Wednesday. In a blog post, company legal representative Suzie White provided an explanation. "We used to have several different documents that outlined what people could and could not do on Facebook, but now we're consolidating all this information to one central place," White wrote. "We've also simplified and clarified a lot of information that applies to you, including some things you shouldn't do when using the site."
The blog post sounded benign. But the brouhaha arose on Sunday over a revision in the wording of Facebook's policy over what happens to profile content--shared items, blog post-like "notes," photos--when members delete their accounts.
Consumer advocacy blog The Consumerist phrased Facebook's fresh policy as "We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever," pointing out that Facebook's ToS spruce-up removed several sentences in which the company said its licenses on user content expired upon account deletion. And that's where the hysteria began.
"Facebook should now be called The Information Blackhole," one Consumerist commenter proclaimed. "What goes in never comes out. Be careful what you huck in there."
Truth be told, most Facebook users won't give a hoot, the same way that the flurry over the Beacon advertising program in late 2007 was fueled by a few vocal privacy advocates while the general population didn't seem to care about it one way or the other. But for advocates of copyright reform and privacy, not to mention photographers and writers who may want the photos they upload or "notes" they write on Facebook to eventually lead to some kind of profit, the news was alarming.
Some prominent Twitterers and bloggers, like New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, announced that they were deleting their Facebook accounts or pulling all uploaded content.
So Facebook issued somewhat of a clarification on Monday to explain what the change really meant.
"We are not claiming and have never claimed ownership of material that users upload," a statement from Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt read. And indeed, Facebook's terms of service do say that "User Content and Applications/Connect Sites" are exempt from its claims on content ownership.
"The new Terms were clarified to be more consistent with the behavior of the site," Schnitt's statement continued. "That is, if you send a message to another user (or post to their wall, etc...), that content might not be removed by Facebook if you delete your account (but can be deleted by your friend)."
The statement also noted a few fine points. First, Facebook's license only permits it to use user content "in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof," indicating that CEO Mark Zuckerberg does not plan to make the site profitable by selling scandalous user photos to the National Enquirer when those Facebook members run for elected office.
And second, if that Facebook content was not public, the site will respect the member's chosen privacy settings. In other words, if your profile and the photos you have uploaded to it are only accessible to people on your friends list, Facebook says it does not have the right to show those photos to anyone outside your friends list.
Facebook has expressed disapproval when photographs and profile screenshots normally protected by the site's login wall or privacy settings have been made public on the Web. The site reportedly threatened gossip blog mogul Nick Denton with an account deletion when one of his properties, Gawker, posted photographs found on a socialite's Facebook profile. Suffice it to say it would be hypocritical for Facebook to publicly distribute, let alone sell, the same content itself.
Things are a little bit murky for sure, though. Unlike the Yahoo-owned Flickr, Facebook does not have extensive copyright preferences, meaning that a professional photographer might want to choose a media-sharing site where there's less of a gray area as to what can actually happen down the road.
But as Facebook becomes more and more of a content-sharing hub, especially now that the Facebook Connect product expands its reach to third-party sites, it's likely there will be a louder cry among members--especially those involved in creative industries who use their Facebook profiles for professional promotion or publicity--for clearer terms.
The way they stand now, Facebook's terms of service claim that the company does not have ownership over content, yet that it does have "an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (to)...use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works, and distribute" material as long as it doesn't violate the privacy preferences set by the user.
Considering Facebook content is login-protected by default, the outcry should be quelled somewhat by that "subject only to your privacy settings" phrasing. Still, this is a debate that might not go away so quickly.
UPDATE at 2:38 p.m. PST: Zuckerberg wrote a post for the Facebook blog later on Monday about the issue: "We still have work to do to communicate more clearly about these issues, and our terms are one example of this," he wrote. "Our philosophy that people own their information and control who they share it with has remained constant. A lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective of the rights we need to provide this service to you. Over time we will continue to clarify our positions and make the terms simpler."
Zuckerberg continued: "We're at an interesting point in the development of the open online world where these issues are being worked out. It's difficult terrain to navigate and we're going to make some missteps, but as the leading service for sharing information we take these issues and our responsibility to help resolve them very seriously."
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
Aside from my life being archived on yet another server as well as the TOS changes, I am also deeply disturbed that many older apps are now being bought by "SpeedDate" which no matter how many times I have deleted the newly bought app that now tries to advertise match-making to me/consumers, it still retains my email address and spams me. I have deleted the application FIVE TIMES as is swallows up old apps! Having been in the Direct Marketing industry for several years now, and watched the evolution of social media, I am so burnt out, never login, and am changing my profession to auto mechanic! Seriously!!
Oh, and did I mention my disdain for SpeedDate?! (BTW I have no association nor have I ever worked for them. I just hate their shady emails!)
I went to Facebook because I didn't like the juvenile aspects of MySpace. Well, I guess there is nowhere you can go. Remember the good old days when people used this thing called "Email" to talk online?! Or better yet, the old BBS's of the late 80's and early 90's? I really miss those days about now.
I have been contacted by several people and facebook gladly forwards these request for friendship to my personal mail id which I had removed. This gave me a reason to believe that their database does not purge the deleted records and only a facebook admin or the company can remove the data, which they will not.
Then again when you want to delete a facebook account, you cannot because they do not allow you to do so. The only option you have is "deactivate". This directly means facebook is going to retain the data in their database. They may say that you may wish to comeback that is why they have the date. I call that horse-****. If I want to delete then why would I want to come back. Ever heard someone trying to recover data they want to securely delete. What facebook should do is ask the user if they want to completely remove their personal data. They must be explicit that the postings on other user accounts will not go away (which is ok) but all images, personal info etc. will be purge once the use confirms deletion.
It is time someone took facebook to court for breach of privacy.
What should really happen when a user deletes their account is they should be offered an option:
A. Delete and hold - remove my account for 6 months and if I don't come back in that time, delete permanently, nothing saved.
B. Delete Permantely, Immediately
Of course you have archived copies of things, but those are understood and since the user is closing their account and not returning they forfeit the rights to those things.
Now, there should be away to remove all traces of a persons, posts, images, etc as they are generally tagged when someone uploads something into the system. If not, you need to strangle your programming team as they've basically screwed you.
I'd be asking a lawyer to ask a court to demand that such a contingency be in place so that when user A decides he wants to vanish from facebook, every email, every photo, every video, etc. just disappeared and was filled in by something else.
But that's just me.
Michael Murdock, CEO
DocMurdock.com
Which means, at any given moment, Zuckerberg could simply remove that line from the policy and start doing whatever he wants with it - and if Facebook can't turn a profit, I wouldn't expect anything less from them. This is the man who stole the entire concept for Facebook from ConnectU - what would stop him from a quick snatch-and-grab of his users content?
And I read through the TOS several times, but I can't seem to find anywhere within it where the Privacy Policy is held to be a legally binding document that takes precedent over their TOS. I find many places where they've claim that in "fluff" talk, on blogs and such, but within the TOS, I can't find anywhere that says privacy settings will be respected in any way. Am I supposed to expect that when the chips go down they aren't going to fall back on their legal safety net?
And to everyone's who frantically deleting photos and content - don't bother, they're keeping it anyway. Might as well just boycott Facebook until they come around - and with the Facebook TOS group at 18,000 members after only a few hours, that's probably going to happen sooner than later.
But what you don't understand is those clowns just revisited the TOS at the request of the boss and did what he told them to do. What's so hard to understand about that? Now he has to tell them they didn't use enough legal talk to get it by everyone last time, go do it again and this time bury it real deep and use the best legal talk in their books.
In contract I have sign they all remain the right change it when they want, I doubt their is a contract in that exist that does not have that term in it.
Most of the people I know are deleting their accounts. I haven't decided on mine yet.
So... that picture you took of your darling little girl that you posted to your page may then become blown up and used on the sides of buses, buildings, TV ads, or whatever to promote Facebook... and their business partners. No financial compensation is required for the commercial use of your content in such a case as it is for promotional purposes.
It's a sneaky thing to do, but it is by no means uncommon either.
These were/are extremely sensitive issues to people, like me, who create art and have the terms of service changed without any notice that affects our constitutionally-protected, inherent copyrights.
Considering "Damage already done" and wishing to preserve the comments friends have written about my own artwork, which I display on my Facebook account, I have chosen to LEAVE my content there -- since they already HAVE copies of my work.
But future postings of my art will be purposely marred with huge copyright symbols.
The VIew Gals and Oprah! Will take you all DOWN!.
Local news at 11, they all piled on.. FINALLY, it's only been 15 years since AOL got grilled for doing the same thing.
Good thing about Depressions, they knock the hell out of far the far swung hubris that unregulated times before promotes.
c3
Facebook where the criminals come to hangout. They will sell your photos in a heartbeat or sell your mother's soul, if it means profits for them. Just try and use the lawyer's statment in a real courtroom, then watch the Judge laugh at you! Berny Mack got some stock to buy.
- by techgeekdude February 17, 2009 11:26 AM PST
- Nice PR response from Zuckerberg...
- Like this Reply to this comment
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (42 Comments)If anything, the change in policy shows that Facebook may finally be devising a business model at its users' expense. Remember, nothing is ever really free, and the loose legalese put out by Facebook gives it enough leeway to do whatever it wants with your information. People may not think it's a big deal, but trust me, when you're private information gets leaked out a few years down the road, it will be too late.