Earlier this year, I wroteseveralposts about Facebook’s crappy terms of service (specifically the portion of their terms related to photo licensing). Shortly after I blogged about it, Facebook’s terms made national news and there was quite a bit of discussion.
Amongst those who thought I was making a big deal out of nothing, one of the consistent themes was that although the terms of service allowed for Facebook to use your photos for any purposes including advertising, they wouldn’t really do that, would they?
When I gave a talk at Ignite Portland surrounding this topic, I commented that people probably wouldn’t want their photos to be used for a dating service (in the video of my talk below, I make that comment if you start watching at 4:40). Guess what: Facebook is now doing just that. You can opt out, but the default setting on Facebook allows them to use your photos as advertisements to meet “Hot Singles in Your Area”. Lovely.
I see that Zuckerberg and crew did a 180 and reverted the “forever” clause in Facebook’s terms of service. It’s a small step in the right direction, but all of my original objections to Facebook’s terms (the objections that led to me deleting my account) remain. Facebook’s licensing terms are still too broad and claim far more rights than is necessary.
I’ll be speaking tomorrow night at Ignite Portland about social networks, media hosting, and licensing terms.
A few weeks ago I posted about deleting my Facebook account due to their terms of service being an overly broad rights grab for any content posted on the site.
There was a lively discussion with over 30 comments left on the post. Commenter Matt Behrens noted that Facebook’s terms indicated that a user could remove his or her content and that Facebook’s license would expire at that time.
Not anymore.
While researching for my presentation, I discovered that Facebook updated their terms of use on February 4th. The section about a user being able to revoke the content license by removing the content from Facebook is now gone. There is no verbiage that indicates a user may remove Facebook’s license. Facebook now claims a perpetual license to any content posted on their service, with no way for a user to terminate that license.
Tonight I was wondering if I should delete my Facebook account. I don’t really use the service… about all that ever happens is that I respond to friend requests. I’m opposed to the fact that Facebook prefers walled gardens to the open web. Having a Facebook presence wasn’t really harming me… but it wasn’t helping either.
Then I read Facebook’s Terms of Use. That pretty much sealed the deal. Unless I’m reading something wrong, I have an issue with this section:
By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.
By posting anything to Facebook, you’re granting Facebook a license to pretty much do anything they want with it, including commercial use.
No thanks. I’ll be making sure that I ping any Facebook-only contacts before I close the account, but my Facebook account will be deleted shortly.
