Monday, February 16, 2009

I may not be your Facebook Friend Anymore...



Have you seen this?

Or this?

Here's a couple of snippets from your Facebook Contract:

"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."


"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."


If I'm interpreting these articles correctly, as of February 4, 2009, anything you post on Facebook past, present and future, including links to your blogs, pictures, ANYTHING - they have irrevocable rights to -- FOREVER! If this is correct and legally binding, Facebook could legitimately lay claim to the content of your blog and publishing rights to a book based upon the content therein. Are you reading this Jon?

Perhaps I need to take a chill pill and talk to someone who knows legalese, but for the moment, I'm none too happy about being Facebook's bee-atch and I'm pretty pissed off. Do I have any lawyer lurkers out there that would care to weigh in on this?

21 comments:

Nick the Geek said...

I'd like to see them actually enforce this against a publishing company. I could conceivably post a link to content I don't have a right to, for example SCL, but that doesn't give them the right to that content.

Quite frankly this kind of blanket statement will have very little legal authority without express consent.

♥ Kathy said...

:o am hoping Nick is right...

Beth in NC said...

I hope Nick is right too!!!

Candy said...

I'm just sad that I'm not your Facebook friend, katdish.

Will they steal your word verification from your blog, too? I hope so because "sessismi" could really make FB implode as in a mad splatter over all the internets. Whoa.

katdish said...

Candy,

I'd be delighted to be your facebook friend, I'm just gonna link my blog or post any more pics. Incidentally, do you know how many Candace Steele's are on Facebook? Are you the one in front of the donut shop?

katdish said...

Nevermind. I found you.

Stephanie Wetzel said...

I interpreted it to mean that the words I post on FB might be affected. But not the links.

I could be totally wrong tho.

And I have The. Best. WV. Ever:

pessed.

Nuff said.

Anonymous said...

tell me more about being a "bee-atch"

Sherri Murphy said...

Does this include nudie photos?

katdish said...

Dear Anonymous:

What do you want to know? Are you needing instruction on how to be one or just how I am one? Please be specific.

Sherri - I don't have any nudie photos on Facebook. (Like I'd give those out for free.)

Anonymous said...

I'm pretty sure anything we put on the internet is free game to anyone who also has access to the internet.

katdish said...

Angela,

Yeah, I get that. But what about an entity laying claim to your intellectual property? For example, I write the best selling book "Hey look a Chicken", then Facebook comes and tells me that THEY are writing a book by the same name that just so happens to contain the exact same content. Because after all, they have rights to it. That's what bugs me. That they are in a position to make money off of people because they can.

(Don't worry folks, I'm not planning on writing a book anytime soon.)

Joanna said...

I think they would have a lot of trouble claiming the content of a blog hosted elsewhere that you link to. People link to allsorts of stuff, most of which is not owned by the person posting the link. However if you also post your blog posts as notes on facebook you may have more trouble.

While it is concerning that facebook can do this, with so many millions of users it is very unlikely that facebook would choose your content to misuse.

Marni said...

A Twitter buddy alerted me to this yesterday. I find it scary, yet I'm not surprised. My friend mused that Facebook must want to keep all our content so one day when one of us runs for President, they'll have those drunken frat party pics to take us down with...

But I'm with Nick. I can't see how their policy can be enforced without written or express consent.

Helen said...

I have a facebook account that I have never used. I guess I am not going to, now...

Annie K said...

Let's just start our own freaking Facebook type thing...who needs FB. Ours would be better anyway...

WV: I consu FB if they try to steal my blog awesomeness and post my lovely face all over the place for their profit?

Tony C said...

I knew those cross-dressing photos would come back to haunt me...honest...it was for charity!

Actually KD you have a similar agreement with Yahoo, Microsoft or any other email server you use that's free.

Big brother is really watching...

Ryan B said...

A couple of weeks ago, we posted an update to our Terms of Use that we hoped would clarify some parts of it for our users. Over the past couple of days, we have received a lot of questions and comments about these updated terms and what they mean for people and their information. Because of the feedback we received, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised. For more information, visit the Facebook Blog.

Just got this on Facebook a few minutes ago. Good work pal.

Anonymous said...

Hey Katdish, a couple of links to stories about this. The first one, Facebook is trying to reassure users. This morning, they came under enough pressure to revert to the old terms of service.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.996d5cb1e73d96f0dfd0871ab8daba1f.391&show_article=1

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/18/facebook.reversal/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

katdish said...

Ryan and Matt -

Thanks for the updates. Clearly they read this post and understood that when you mess with the bull you get the horns.

(she said with great humility)

Anonymous said...

Katdish - I don't think they could take it so far as to steal your HLAC book. (Although, if they could, I'm sure they would!) That's like a publisher claiming rights to a book and extending those rights to some other book that you referenced in the endnotes of yours. I don't think they can follow a link and then claim what they find.

In light of more recent information, I have no doubt whatsoever that your post was the catalyst to FB's reevaluation of their claims. I mean - the last thing they want is bad press on HLAC! Seriously!