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Facebook's New Terms of Service
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Feb 16, 2009 09:05 AM
from the are-we-really-worried-about-this dept.
from the are-we-really-worried-about-this dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Chris Walters writes about Facebook's new terms of service. 'Facebook's terms of service (TOS) used to say that when you closed an account on their network, any rights they claimed to the original content you uploaded would expire. Not anymore.
Now, anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later. Want to close your account? Good for you, but Facebook still has the right to do whatever it wants with your old content. They can even sublicense it if they want.'" Oh no! Now they'll be able to license your super flair goblin poke 25 tag history!
Related Stories
Submission: Facebook's New Terms Of Service by Anonymous Coward
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Technology: Facebook Scrambles To Contain ToS Fallout 409 comments
Ian Lamont writes "Anger over Facebook's ToS update has forced the company to scramble. Yesterday, a spokesman released a statement that said Facebook has never 'claimed ownership of material that users upload,' and is trying to be more open to users about how their data is being handled. Mark Zuckerberg has also weighed in, stating 'we wouldn't share your information in a way you wouldn't want.' Facebook members are skeptical, however — protests have sprung up on blogs, message boards, and a new Facebook group called 'People Against the new Terms of Service' that has added more than 10,000 members today."
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EFF Launches TOS Tracker 65 comments
stoolpigeon writes with this quote from the EFF:
"'Terms of Service' policies on websites define how Internet businesses interact with you and use your personal information. But most web users don't read these policies — or understand that the terms are constantly changing. To track these ever-evolving documents, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is launching TOSBack: a 'terms of service' tracker for Facebook, Google, eBay, and other major websites. ... The issue of terms-of-service changes — and how and why they are made — was highlighted earlier this year when Facebook modified its terms of use. Facebook users worried that the change gave the company the right to use members' content indefinitely. After a user revolt, Facebook announced that it would restore the former terms while it worked through the concerns users had raised."
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Current users? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Current users? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Current users? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a little sketchy on this one, can they actually do this? I mean, the users signed up under the expectation that copyright law would be honored. I don't think that they actually have a legal leg to stand on here. You can change the TOS so that new material uploaded will be owned by Facebook, but changing the TOS and expecting that to change the copyright on a lot of media retroactively? I only pray that this is what kills facebook so I can stop hearing people rant about how great it is and how I should join.
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Re:Current users? (Score:5, Funny)
I only pray that this is what kills facebook so I can stop hearing people rant about how great it is and how I should join.
I'm an atheist, so forgive the expression.
Amen.
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Re:Current users? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Current users? (Score:5, Informative)
From the first paragraph in the TOS:
We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change or delete portions of these Terms at any time without further notice. Your continued use of the Facebook Service after any such changes constitutes your acceptance of the new Terms.
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Re:Current users? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, but if you discontinue use and disagree with the current terms, can you get them to delete you like they would under the old ones?
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Re:Current users? (Score:5, Interesting)
You will have to log in first in order to delete your account. So either log in now, which constitutes use of Facebook after the TOS have been published, and FB will keep the content you're about to delete, or never log in again and leave your content online for FB to do whatever it wants with it.
Facebook: helping you give away your privacy since 2003!
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Re:Current users? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well golly, that clause should hold up well in court.
That's like McDonald's posting up a sign on a random wall in small print "by eating our food you agree not to sue us for any reason".
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Re:Current users? (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, it would be more like a sign on the McDonald's door saying, "By entering this door, you agree to any terms posted within."
Or better yet, "By parking in our parking lot, you agree to be bound to any terms presented."
I have always wanted to put a sign on my front door which says, "By ringing my door bell, you agree to be squirted with a fully-loaded SuperSoaker, confronted by an angry naked man, or some combination thereof."
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Re:Current users? (Score:4, Insightful)
Fortunately that is a completely invalid contract point. You can not wish for more wishes, and a contract one side can change without notice or renegotiation is not a valid contract.
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That's why I don't use the internet (Score:4, Funny)
It is a scam and a waste of time.
Re:That's why I don't use the internet (Score:5, Funny)
It is a scam and a waste of time.
At the danger of being wooshed, what the fuck are you doing talking about a waste of time on slashdot? ^_^
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Uh, yeah! (Score:4, Informative)
You get what you paid for.
Naive thinking... (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares if Facebook can technically now use whatever you post forever. So could anyone who archived the page, or even took a screenshot. Not to mention that Facebook really aren't going to have the slightest interest in the average user, nor in using their content if and when they leave the site.
Re:Naive thinking... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Naive thinking... (Score:5, Funny)
You say that now... wait till they license 1,000,000 pictures in bulk at $0.01/image to someone who publishes gay pin-up calenders... including that picture of you at the beach with your shirt off when you were 17...
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Re:Naive thinking... (Score:5, Funny)
including that picture of you at the beach with your shirt off when you were 17...
I don't think _anyone_ at /. has to worry about that.
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Re:Naive thinking... (Score:5, Informative)
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There still was this thing called "copyright" (Score:5, Informative)
There still was this thing called copyright, though. Anything you post is by default copyrighted to yourself. You don't even need to do anything special. So, yes, people could still have your photos in their browser's cache, but weren't legally allowed to do much with them.
E.g., just because I saved your family photo on my hard drive, doesn't mean I can cut and paste your daughter's head into an ad for condoms, nor as an ad for Adult Friend Finder, nor on top of a porn-star's body and sell subscriptions to that site, nor pretty much anything else.
A TOS which grants any entity full rights to your stuff, including to license it further, means pretty much just that: you forfeit any legal rights or recourses you might have had. If they want to use it for any purpose whatsoever, they can. You just gave them that right.
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Re:Naive thinking... (Score:5, Informative)
Well I know one girl who was being stalked on Facebook.
So she immediately closed her account, which the original TOS said would erase everything and thereby "disappear" from the stalker's attentions. But if facebook can keep information and publish it, that means the data could still be available to said stalker (or future stalkers), and YES that means the new policy causes harm.
Or worse, an employer uncovering photos of your sorority sister drinking party which you thought was deleted, but facebook still has published somewhere publicly. Just a few months ago a local teacher was fired for an old college drinking photo from ~5 years ago.
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Re:Naive thinking... (Score:4, Interesting)
On the face of it, this policy makes sense if FB realized that they could not assure timely clean-up when somebody quit. Too much risk of being sued.
Avoidance of lawsuits is almost certainly the reason for their policy of taking ownership of anything posted to FB. It is an easy way, and perhaps the only way, of assuring that they can kill stuff that needs to be removed without being hassled with nuisance suits.
I don't see any way of running something like FB without these kinds of policies. The only surprising thing here is that FB didn't realize it needed ownership forever until recently.
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Data Protection Act (Score:5, Interesting)
IANAL, but could someone, even if YANAL, please tell where this would come in under the UK's Data Protection Act?
Surely they can't keep such information if you want it to be removed.
Well gee... (Score:4, Funny)
I guess I'll stop backing up my code to "My notes".
is this a surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, think about what Facebook knows about everyone who's signed up. They have names and contact information. They have leisure-time activities. They have browsing profiles. They have entertainment interests. They have friend lists. And then throw that "25 things people don't know about me" thing that was going around a few weeks ago into the mix. Now they have that information, too. And people are just voluntarily giving all that info away. Of course they're going to hang onto that information (and sell it) if given the chance. What did you think they were going to do with it?
Re:is this a surprise? (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder what the marketers will do with:
14) I will go out of my way not buy anything because of unsolicited marketing.
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Oh noes! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's FACEBOOK.
Frankly, I'm even willing to say "If you put it on Facebook, it doesn't have any value anyway."
If you're such a creative genius, spend the 6$ per month for web hosting and make your own website.
It's the Deletion procedure (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook doesn't have an actual "deletion" procedure for accounts. When someone wants to "delete" their account, it is simply disabled and their profile is no longer accessible, nor does it appear in search results. Their name will still appear in tagged photos and on wall posts, etc, but it will no longer be clickable.
The only way to truly delete one's account is to remove oneself from all tags, delete all posts, remove all pictures and videos, and all other user stuff manually , then "delete" the account. The only way not to leave a trace is to bomb the footsteps.
I think the reason this exists is because Facebook does not handle foreign key deletion well, if at all. The deletion of a user profile record would have to cascade down through every table in the database, removing every instance of that user. Who knows how long that could take. It's easier to simply mark the profile inactive and handle that in software.
This license change allows Facebook to hold on to all of the stuff a user has uploaded even after the user has "deleted" his or her account. IMO, Facebook is using legal means instead of developing a technological solution to the problem.
Not Surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Ad revenue is about to drop off a cliff (if it hasn't already), and loss making enterprises like FB - who's only revenue stream, other than VC funding rounds, was ad revenue - are going to have to start "monetizing" (what a lovely word for strip mining everything in sight) otherwise they will be in trouble.
Never forget Beacon. Their silent implementation of that privacy nightmare gives a brief view of their true intents - and that was done in the days when people were throwing money at them and they were being valued as being bigger than GM. Now the economic hardships are starting to bite I am not at all surprised they have attempted this.
grrrr. (Score:4, Insightful)
well.. thats was FB says anyhow.
but we have yet to see this tested in a court of law, and I rather think we will.
after all, the bank could change their TOS to allow them to remove as much money from your account as they wanted - but they would soon be challenged in court and more importantly face a mass exodus.
so at this time, I'll take this with a pinch of salt.
besides, they are welcome to my trivial rantings and boring posts - its not like I would put anything important up on there.
Once you upload or post it, it's no longer yours (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Once you upload or post it, it's no longer your (Score:4, Interesting)
That's been the rule of the Internet for nearly two decades.
Is that why at the bottom of slashdot it says "Comments are owned by the Poster."?
With respect to text or data entered into and stored by publicly-accessible site features such as forums, comments and bug trackers ("SourceForge Public Content"), the submitting user retains ownership of such SourceForge Public Content; with respect to publicly-available statistical content which is generated by the site to monitor and display content activity, such content is owned by SourceForge. In each such case, the submitting user grants SourceForge the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, and display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed, all subject to the terms of any applicable license.
They MUST have that right, otherwise you could sue them for posting your comments, and your comments stay INDEFINITELY. If you delete your Slashdot account, your comments still stay archived online, so exactly what's so evil about the new ToS?
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But can I unfriend someone? (Score:5, Informative)
A PERSON could go mad trying to pinpoint the moment he lost a friend. So seldom does that friend make his feelings clear by sending out an e-mail alert.
It's not just a fact of life, but also a policy on Facebook. While many trivial actions do prompt Facebook to post an alert to all your friends -- adding a photo, changing your relationship status, using Fandango to buy tickets to "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" -- striking someone off your list simply is not one of them.
It is this policy that Burger King ran afoul of this month with its "Whopper Sacrifice" campaign, which offered a free hamburger to anyone who severed the sacred bonds with 10 of the friends they had accumulated on Facebook. Facebook suspended the program because Burger King was sending notifications to the castoffs letting them know they'd been dropped for a sandwich (or, more accurately, a tenth of a sandwich).
The campaign, which boasted of ending 234,000 friendships, is history now -- Burger King chose to end it rather than tweak it to fit Facebook's policy -- but the same can hardly be said of the emerging anxiety it tapped. As social networking becomes ubiquitous, people with an otherwise steady grip on social etiquette find themselves flummoxed by questions about "unfriending" people: how to do it, when to do it and how to get away with it quietly.
"If someone with more than 1,000 friends unfriends me, I get offended," said Greg Atwan, an author of "The Facebook Book," a satirical guide. "But if someone only has 100 friends, you understand they're trying to limit it to their intimates."
Mr. Atwan, a recent graduate of Harvard (where Facebook got its start), recommends culling your friend list once a year to remove total strangers and other hangers-on. Keeping your numbers down gives you more leeway to be selective about whom you approve in the first place, he said.
(While some people prefer the term "defriending," a quick survey of user-created groups on Facebook shows "unfriending" to be the more popular choice. A Facebook spokeswoman, Brandee Barker, said there was no officially preferred term.)
Of course, not all unfriendings are equal. There seem to be several varieties, ranging from the completely impersonal to the utterly vindictive. First is the simple thinning of the herd, removing that grad student you met at a party two years ago and haven't spoken to since or that kid from middle school you barely remember.
These were the people whom Steven Schiff, a news assistant at Vault.com, a career services Web site, sacrificed to get his Whopper.
"I found there were quite a few people on my list that I'd never even spoken to, much less been close friends with," he said by telephone.
Mr. Schiff, 25, said he experienced only the slightest guilt at eliminating those people. While he didn't feel the need to write to them individually to explain things, he did use his personal blog to address them en masse.
"Let's be honest here, questionable Facebook friend," he wrote. "We've been keeping you around all this time because we'd just feel bad if you ever found out that you got the ax. It's just, well, up until now nobody offered us a Whopper in exchange for your feelings."
This was just the sort of sentiment that Burger King and its advertising agency, Crispin Porter & Bogusky, were aiming to evoke when they set up the campaign. Burger King decided that it would do the talking for this article rather than its agency and delegated the task to Brian Gies, a vice president of marketing who said he was not a member of Facebook and therefore had not participated in the "Whopper Sacrifice."
Mr. Gies explained the marketing team's thinking about Facebook. "It s
Looking forward to the collapse of Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously ... I'm sick and tired of hearing Facebook this, Facebook that, oh why don't you log on to Facebook, it's great and I'm meeting up with all these people ... sheesh. I've been to high school once already. I didn't like it, and I don't want to do it a second time, ok?
Thankfully, the hype cycle is just about done and everyone will move on to something else soon. Don't believe me? It's just part of a cycle that's been going on for a long time. People moved from AOL, to Yahoo, to MySpace, to Facebook ... it'll continue to happen, right on schedule.
And if that's not enough to convince you, consider the millions of teenagers who get online every year. The *last* thing they want to do is join the same online community that their parents are on! That's SO NOT COOL!!
From a practical point of view, Facebook's "walled garden" approach has failed before. Just ask AOL. A site that requires that you totally immerse yourself in it just to get a feel for what it's about is not sustainable. A while ago I wanted to poke around just to see what all the fuss is about, only to find out that you had to create an account in order to do so. WTF? So I created a throw-away account with a fake name. Then I went to browse the profiles of people I knew were on Facebook, only to find out that you have to "friend" them in order to read their profiles, which would of course subject you to an incoming torrent of high school bullshit from everyone on their friends lists.
No thanks. After seeing the way some people go into withdrawal if they don't check Facebook every 15 minutes, I'm happier than ever to NOT be a part of this particular clusterfuck. I want online tools that SAVE time, not CONSUME more and more of it.
Re:Looking forward to the collapse of Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
People like you don't "get it", honestly.
I say that because I was one of them myself.
I DO happen to agree with you about it being cyclical, though. That's given with practically anything out there. Even a basically "here to stay" type of web site such as eBay is more likely part of a longer boom/bust cycle. (I can remember when sites like Amazon auctions were every bit as good and viable a place to buy and sell as eBay. And eBay is steadily angering people with their changes to their feedback system, merger with PayPal and subsequent attempts to force its use for payments, etc.)
But the thing is, I didn't care much for my high-school days either -- yet I *did* build up a list of former friends over the years who I lost track of. That tends to happen when people get married and have kids. They get so involved with "family", they don't have time to just hang out with all their old friends anymore -- and next thing you know? It's a holiday or something and they try to make contact, only to find out that friend has moved and they can't be reached.
Facebook added a lot of "value" for me, giving me a way to re-connect with many of those people I had been wondering about for years. Yet, it still lets you keep them at "arm's reach" if you prefer. (EG. You can make them a "friend" online, allowing you to view their photos, status updates, etc. so you have a current idea of what they've got going on. But you don't have to invest the time required to start calling them on the phone or hanging out in person, which you might otherwise do as a thinly veiled excuse to collect that same info.)
People can get addicted to anything, and Facebooks addicts are out there too. Myself? I check mine once every 1-2 days for a few minutes. It's a small investment of time to gather a lot of current info on people I'm curious about. Saves me more time than it wastes, really.
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Facebook must be peaking (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a clause that only matters if Facebook is in decline. On the way up, the fate of the information about departed users doesn't matter. On the way down, it matters a lot.
Social networking sites have a life cycle, which is reflected in their long term traffic statistics. They open, they may become popular, the cool people move in, there's a herd effect that makes them grow more if they start to become popular, the losers move in, the cool people leave, growth starts to flatten, and then the long decline starts, usually leveling out at maybe a quarter of peak. This works just like cool nightclubs and restaurants. Anybody who goes out frequently in a major city knows this pattern.
AOL, Geocities, EZboard, Salon, Nerve, Bebo, and Tribe all peaked years ago. Myspace peaked in early 2008, according to Alexa traffic stats. Facebook hasn't visibly peaked yet, but it looks like their management sees the inevitable coming and is getting ready.
This is a hint that it's too late for Facebook to IPO. That had to happen on the way up, or it won't happen at all. There was much talk of a Facebook IPO in 2007 or 2008, but now the word is "2010, if ever". Probably never. They should have gone public earlier.
Re:No different to any google service (Score:4, Insightful)
Facebook is specifically for private/personal data. Possibly it's more personal than even a gmail account - but do Google really claim rights to use and retain all your emails in perpetuity?
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Re:No different to any google service (Score:5, Funny)
How cares? If they can't profit from your data why should they even bother to keep it? Just toss it out like a cryogenic storage farm that doesn't want to buy any more liquid nitrogen.
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Re:No different to any google service (Score:5, Funny)
Like a what?! Dude, seriously, what's wrong with a car analogy?
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Re:No different to any google service (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:No different to any google service (Score:5, Insightful)
How cares? If they can't profit from your data why should they even bother to keep it? Just toss it out like a cryogenic storage farm that doesn't want to buy any more liquid nitrogen.
We're now in an age where storage is cheap. We can afford to store relatively massive amounts of information based on the possibility that it might be valuable at one point. Then we index that information in various ways - possibly new ways in the future that we hadn't thought of before. Finally, we cross-reference all these indexes to come up with additional information that would normally be hidden in the noise or not normally associated with the initial information collected. It's called data mining. And it's not entirely a new concept.
The US military has a concept called EEFI (Essential Elements of Friendly Information). The common definition is:
Key questions likely to be asked by adversary officials and intelligence systems about specific friendly intentions, capabilities, and activities, so they can obtain answers critical to their operational effectiveness. Also called EEFI.
What this means is that unclassified pieces of information can be aggregated to uncover classified information. Let's say CNN reports that there is a possible conflict between NationA and NationB where the US has announced support for the tropical nation of NationB. Meanwhile, agents monitoring BaseX have noticed that the troops have gone to 12hr shifts. Troops seen at the local Superstore have a sudden increased interest in purchasing clothing and supplies for a warm climate. Transport aircraft are seen flying in to BaseX. Agents are able to take these various unclassified pieces of information and uncover the classified orders that Units from BaseX are about to deploy to NationB. Agents also know the types of missions these units train for and will be able to further predict US intentions and capabilities in the region.
Back to our personal lives. The value of our personal information about those lives isn't in the particular individual. It's in the ability to feed to a massive data pool that is then mined to uncover aspects of our lives that we never intended to make public.
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Re:No different to any google service (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook is specifically for private/personal data.
If it's for private and personal data, why is the main function of the site showing it to other people? If you really wanted to keep it private and personal, why has it left your machine?
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Re:Paranoia (Score:5, Insightful)
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Here's an even more devious possibility. (Score:5, Interesting)
Some pornography company sublicenses photos of one million girls in bikinis and their contact info from Facebook. They then send something like the following letter to the girls:
"Recently, for inclusion in our published material, we purchased the rights to the enclosed photo you licensed to Facebook. We were concerned that you may not want to be included, so we are giving you the chance to opt-out. We need only a payment of $50 to cover the amount we paid Facebook and administrative costs. If you do not want to pay and wished to be included in our published material, you will be featured in our "Skanky Bikini Amateurs" collection on our website. Thank you."
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Re:Here's an even more devious possibility. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Woh Wo (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:No different to any google service (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, why is there Drama?
The real issue they are addressing is that of keeping the commons alive. IF you put pictures you have taken of landscapes on their site, under the standard sharing license, then they are not going to remove them from EVERYBODY ELSE'S pages just because you closed your page. That's the real issue they're addressing. they may be in the process of making a cool TV commercial, showing cool facebook pages, and they're not going to stop making the commercial just because you pulled your pictures down.
This is really no different than GPL'd software source code. Once it's out there, there's no getting it back... everybody here should understand that quite well.
I think the issue is simply that they are not going to ever promise to "remove" your content.. it's backed up too many places, and the whole point of social media is to mash-up and cross-pollinate from the pool of stuff people choose to share. You can't just "take your ball and go home".
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Re:Politicians beware (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not really. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
I know it is hip to get all hysterical over personal information that is already "out there", but I've highlighted the part that really matters.
In short, they can't do anything with it after you close your account that they couldn't do with it before you closed your account. And since you can change your privacy settings before you close your account this is pretty much a non-issue. Change all your settings to "Only My Friends", then remove all your friends.
Really, people, the only difference here is that they don't do you the service of making all your data inaccessible to the people who could access it before. And why should they? That would be like slashdot removing all your old posts when you remove your account. Yes, I know it's "personal" data, but my guess is your 'friends' are more of a threat to your privacy than Facebook. After all, the only legal consequence for your friends sharing that information is that they can be kicked off Facebook for violating the terms of service.
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Re:nobody cares. (or should) (Score:5, Informative)
That may be true but it doesn't stop me from posting that picture of you at the party with a lampshade over your head naked as a jaybird screwing that goat does it? Worse, it doesn't stop me from tagging that image "Anonymous Coward screwing around at the party. A must see" and allowing Facebook to index it.
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