Mashable and The Consumerist broke the news today that there’s been a significant change to Facebook’s Terms-of-Service (or “TOS”). There is a flurry of speculation as to what exactly the changes mean, but one thing is clear: Facebook more or less owns any content you publish on their site, and your account can never be deleted. So, anything you put on Facebook is probably going to follow you around for awhile. Check out the new TOS paragraph:
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 or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.
Yikes. Photographers—take note. You probably want to start watermarking or digitally signing your photographs. I’d recommend a huge, ugly watermark right across the photo. As a writer that feeds his blog through his Facebook account, this has left me to wonder if my blog, though published externally, is also subject to this new clause. Would my posts then become the property of Facebook, to be re-used and re-purposed at their discretion?
As disturbing as the new TOS may seem, there is something much more disturbing brought to light by the controversy sparked by this change. The fact is, Facebook’s new clause in their TOS is closer to an industry standard than an exception. The outrage sparked by the changes highlights how few users actually read TOS’s when signing up for an online service. Even Google’s Gmail service, despite Google’s benign and egalitarian image, has a clause almost identical to Facebook’s controversial clause.
If anything comes out of this, I am hoping it will be a renewed interest in TOS agreements, as painfully long and boring as they are. Rarely do I take the time to read a TOS agreement anymore, but Facebook has reminded us just how far the implications & consequences of glossing over a TOS contract could extend.
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2 comments:
Rest assured that would never hold up in court. The law doesn't let you to trick people into giving the rights to their everything to you. All together now... EQUITY!
Hopefully, however I doubt they would have written a TOS that didn't hold some sort of legal value. It will be interesting to see what comes of this--Yahoo's TOS was actually changed after a similar backlash to this one.
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