Google has released additional details about the privacy policy it plans to use if its settlement over Google Book Search is approved.
(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)Google has released a more detailed privacy policy for its Google Books product, a move demanded in recent weeks by several critics of its settlement with publishers and authors.
The company announced the new policy in a blog post late Thursday afternoon, saying it developed the policy following conversations with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Google had previously said it was unable to release a detailed policy because the Google Books product was incomplete due to the fact that the settlement allowing its Book Search project to display certain types of books has yet to be formally approved.
However, criticism of Google's lack of detailed information on the subject appears to have forced its hand. "To provide all users with a clear understanding of our practices, and in response to helpful comments about needing to be clearer about the Books product from the FTC and others, we wanted to highlight key provisions of the main Google Privacy Policy in the context of the Google Books service, as well as to describe privacy practices specific to the Google Books service," wrote Jane Horvath, general privacy counsel for Google, in a blog post.
A few highlights of the new policy, the full text of which can be found here:
• Google will not require book searchers to create a Google account if they are viewing pages of books online, browsing books through a university's institution subscription to the book service, or accessing the book service from a public terminal at a library.
• If you want to actually buy a book you'll need to have a Google account, but Google will let users remove records of books they have purchased from their accounts and said it will not pass along information about specific books that were purchased to credit card companies.
• Google plans to release a more detailed privacy policy containing specific language about the various services that will be available when, and if, the settlement is approved giving it the right to offer the service.
It's not clear whether these provisions will be enough to quiet those criticizing the settlement on privacy grounds, but it's a step in that direction. The proposed settlement will be debated at a court hearing in New York in October.
The Federal Trade Commission is planning to crack down on bloggers who review or promote products while earning freebies or payments, the Associated Press reported Sunday.
This would, for the first time, bring bloggers under FTC guidelines that ban deceptive or unfair business practices.
"New guidelines, expected to be approved late this summer with possible modifications, would clarify that the agency can go after bloggers--as well as the companies that compensate them--for any false claims or failure to disclose conflicts of interest," the article explained.
The rules could be quite strict, even extending to the practice of affiliate links--for example, a music blogger who links to a song on Amazon MP3 or iTunes that earns an affiliate commission in the process.
The practice of free products for bloggers, most of whom are not bound by ethical guidelines that journalists have historically followed, has been making headlines for some time now. Microsoft, for example, created a wave of bad press a few years ago when it gave free Acer laptops preloaded with Windows Vista to several dozen bloggers.
Some companies have sprung up around the whole notion of blogger compensation and giveaways. The AP article mentions some of the marketing companies that have made a business out of offering bloggers incentives--free trips, products, gift certificates, or outright payments--for coverage. One of them, Izea, has been generating controversy in the tech press since it started PayPerPost.
Izea says that it requires bloggers to disclose what they've gotten paid for or what they've received for free. But with the proposed FTC guidelines, if a blogger fails to disclose a freebie or payment, both Izea and the blogger could be held responsible. The FTC could also take issue with the fact that for at least one promotion, Izea has said it avoided including bloggers who would be likely to give the company negative press.
Izea CEO Ted Murphy wrote in a blog post Monday that the company supports stricter FTC regulations for bloggers.
"The companies that should be worried about these changes are those that have no standards and no way to enforce disclosure," Murphy wrote. "We have invested millions of dollars creating systems that allow us to automate transactions and verify standardized disclosure."
But some bloggers, the AP article mentioned, are concerned that the FTC's efforts could go too far, possibly generating probes into posts that were written without any compensation, and possibly leading bloggers to post with more restraint. And some believe it would be better if bloggers created their own standards based on niche and industry.
Then there's this: does the FTC realize just how many small-time bloggers are out there? Championing business ethics is a worthy goal, but, um, good luck getting much done when there are hundreds of thousands of blogs out there and new ones popping up more or less daily. Ever heard of the expression "herding cats?"
This post was updated at 11:37 a.m. PT with comment from Izea.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hosted a press conference that started at 11 a.m. PST Thursday to discuss "the new steps Facebook is taking to improve user understanding and ownership of the Facebook terms of service and, more generally, the policies of the Facebook service." The play-by-play is here. Facebook's full announcement is posted below as well.
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Facing a federal complaint from a leading privacy advocacy organization and a revolt of tens of thousands of its users, Facebook on Tuesday night backed down from what many have seen as an onerous privacy policy.
Facebook informed all its users that it has, temporarily at least, reverted its terms of service to the previous version.
(Credit: Screenshot by CNET Networks)The policy had seemed to grant Facebook perpetual rights to users' uploaded content, and the threatened complaint from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) had demanded, essentially, that the social-networking service return to its previous terms.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post late Tuesday that the company had decided to do just that:
Many of us at Facebook spent most of today discussing how best to move forward. One approach would have been to quickly amend the new terms with new language to clarify our positions further. Another approach was simply to revert to our old terms while we begin working on our next version. As we thought through this, we reached out to respected organizations to get their input.Going forward, we've decided to take a new approach towards developing our terms. We concluded that returning to our previous terms was the right thing for now. As I said yesterday, we think that a lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective so we don't plan to leave it there for long.
Zuckerberg also said that the company would be adopting a new set of terms that would more carefully take users' rights into consideration:
More than 175 million people use Facebook. If it were a country, it would be the sixth most populated country in the world. Our terms aren't just a document that protect our rights; it's the governing document for how the service is used by everyone across the world. Given its importance, we need to make sure the terms reflect the principles and values of the people using the service.Our next version will be a substantial revision from where we are now. It will reflect the principles I described yesterday around how people share and control their information, and it will be written clearly in language everyone can understand. Since this will be the governing document that we'll all live by, Facebook users will have a lot of input in crafting these terms.
The move came after Facebook had, earlier in the day, polled its users as to whether it should revert to its previous terms. And in his blog, Zuckerberg said that the company would be asking users to get involved in crafting the next set of terms.
"If you'd like to get involved in crafting our new terms," Zuckerberg wrote, "you can start posting your questions, comments and requests in the group we've created--Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. I'm looking forward to reading your input."
Certainly, we'll have more on this as it develops.
But in the meantime, as blogger Leo Laporte put it on Twitter this evening, "Put down the pitchforks and call off the rabble."
A leading privacy advocacy group is preparing to file a federal complaint against Facebook's new privacy policies, a published report said Tuesday.
According to PC World, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is getting ready to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, demanding that the massively popular social networking service return to its previous policies.
It appears that the major thrust of EPIC's--and many others' anger--at Facebook stems from new language in the privacy policy that grants the company seemingly perpetual control over content users post there:
"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....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.
There are currently more than 46,000 members of a Facebook group set up to protest the new policies.
In a blog post defending the new language, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg argued that it wasn't as onerous as people were claiming, and that:
Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with. When a person shares information on Facebook, they first need to grant Facebook a license to use that information so that we can show it to the other people they've asked us to share it with. Without this license, we couldn't help people share that information.One of the questions about our new terms of use is whether Facebook can use this information forever. When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created--one in the person's sent messages box and the other in their friend's inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear.
In reality, we wouldn't share your information in a way you wouldn't want. The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work. Our goal is to build great products and to communicate clearly to help people share more information in this trusted environment.
But, wrote PC World, other online services, like MySpace, Twitter and YouTube, all have less strict controls over users' content.
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