Unethical Facebook Lays Claim to User Content
Stacey Whitman delves into the new, most-likely illegal, and most definitely unethical Facebook Terms of Service.
[Facebook] claim[s] they have all rights in perpetuity to any content here on the site (previously, it was simply a basic right to post your content here on the site and use in marketing, the latter of which was bad enough).
Note this clause--especially the words "fully paid" and "right to sublicense":You are solely responsible for the User Content that you Post on or through the Facebook Service. 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. You represent and warrant that you have all rights and permissions to grant the foregoing licenses.
This is making me rethink the whole Facebook thing. Course any management team that includes Bush-apologizer/defender Ted Ullyot should be suspect.
Labels: Stacey Whitman
posted by Rick Klaw at
9:11 PM
7 Comments:
That's an utterly standard, universally-encountered clause. Pick a major website out there - Yahoo, Google, a lot of major forums, all social networking and blogging sites that I'm aware of including yours, etc - you'll find that exact same rule and often that exact same wording. It's absolutely not new - it's been on Facebook for years and on the rest of the net for a decade or more - and it's absolutely legal.
Is it annoying? Yes. Is it new, or even remotely Facebook-specific? Oh, hell no.
Non-exclusive means you still have the right to publish or sell your own work, but so does Facebook. Not as bad as demanding exclusive rights, but still be wary of posting anything you wouldn't want to see turn up elsewhere.
Having worked in publishing for 20 years or so, I am well aware of what non-exclusive means and I've even signed contracts that granted those rights. The main issue here is this phrase that was recently REMOVED from their ToS without alerting anyone,
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.
and replaced it with this:
The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook Service: Prohibited Conduct, User Content, Your Privacy Practices, Gift Credits, Ownership; Proprietary Rights, Licenses, Submissions, User Disputes; Complaints, Indemnity, General Disclaimers, Limitation on Liability, Termination and Changes to the Facebook Service, Arbitration, Governing Law; Venue and Jurisdiction and Other.
So now they retain rights even after removing the stuff.
Zibblsnrt-->> Just because everyone does it does NOT make it right or ethical. And should be openly spoken about.
I decided to check the copyright clauses on some of the sites I frequent.
Google/Blogger explicitly states that it has NO rights to my intellectual property.
Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services. You or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any Content you submit, post or display on or through Google services and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying and distributing Google services. Google furthermore reserves the right to refuse to accept, post, display or transmit any Content in its sole discretion.
They can reproduce any publicly posted items, much like anyone else, but they claim no rights.
Twitter makes no claims at all on my intellectual property.
We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to the Twitter service. Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours. You can remove your profile at any time by deleting your account. This will also remove any text and images you have stored in the system.
LinkedIn makes some similar claims as Facebook but nothing is in perpetuity.
This license includes, inter alia, the right for LinkedIn to reproduce, represent, adapt, translate, digitize, use for advertising purposes, whether commercial or non-commercial, to sublicense or to transfer the content concerning each User (including information, pictures, descriptions, search criteria, etc.) over all or part of the Services and/or in any mailings of LinkedIn and in general through any electronic communication media (email, SMS, MMS, WAP, Internet, CD Rom or DVD).
Facebook claims everything including shared links posted to their service even after deleting your account!
Facebook responds
Screw FB. I think I'm migrating all of my photo content to pbase.com.
THAT site explicitly states "All images are copyright of their owners." Lord forbid I see my kid's face marketing a haircare product!
Facebook changed back their ToS... at least for now.
Who knows where to download XRumer 5.0 Palladium?
Help, please. All recommend this program to effectively advertise on the Internet, this is the best program!
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