Facebook and User Content
When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. 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. 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. Facebook does not assert any ownership over your User Content; rather, as between us and you, subject to the rights granted to us in these Terms, you retain full ownership of all of your User Content and any intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights associated with your User Content.
5 Responses to 'Facebook and User Content'
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That’s comforting. I suppose it’s good that Facebook isn’t out to steal people’s heartfelt notes and publish them in a big book of short stories.
Luke Kaiser
18 Nov 08 at 9:57 pm
There is a general problem with EULAs: that most people never read them, and even if you glance through it the legalese is impenetrable to most of us. As far as I know, no one has ever been held accountable for the agreements they make in EULAs, and it mostly functions as legal cover for the company.
That said, I remain confused about Facebook’s user agreement. Facebook appears to retain the right to use your information for whatever purposes they like, commercial or not, in perpetuity. If you take your profile down, Facebook retains the right to use its own archives of that information. Signing this agreement merely asserts your right to grant Facebook’s use of that content. In other words, it sounds from this agreement that Facebook has complete operational control over the content you post. I don’t have any particular problem with that; but then Facebook says that it is still your intellectual property.
What, exactly, is the force of that final claim? If I am the sole owner of the intellectual property posted on my profile, then I should be able to limit its uses in any way I see fit. Facebook is declaring its right to use my content in any way that IT sees fit, and to profit from that content in any medium (including derivative works), without my approval.
I am not legal scholar, but it seems that the only right I retain as the owner of that content, is the freedom to reproduce that content as I see fit. Facebook has not asserted exclusive control of the content, but merely a competing control of the content. If I post a great joke on my wall, I am still free to sell that joke to Jay Leno. But Facebook can also try to sell that same joke to Leno, without compensating me in any way.
Is that a bad thing? I don’t know, and I think it will be a while before we figure out how to keep track of content ownership on the web. But that last bolded claim does strike me as somewhat disingenuous given the rights Facebook claims to have just a few sentences earlier.
Daniel Estrada
19 Nov 08 at 12:26 am
no, I think what Facebook is saying is that they can repeat that joke to Jay Leno, without your consent, but they still have to say it was yours. They seem to be twisting the term ‘intellectual right’ but by using it still agree to maintain some aspects of the definition.
whether they would follow through on that agreement, who knows, but they still claim to leave you with that right. they do make a confusing stance on this topic, and im not sure if we should really be trusting a corporation with so much power in its hands. EVERYONE uses facebook, to the point where its debilitating not to. I was talking to this girl the other day and she expressed how frustrated she was that some group she was in posted the notifications of their events on facebook only, and since she didn’t have one she never found out about the events. facebook is such that now its almost not a choice to have one, and with this vast amount of information at their hands many others have been lead to corruption. who’s to say facebook won’t do the same?
Elena Solomon
20 Nov 08 at 5:02 pm
I think the problem with Facebook is that it is a monopoly. We all just glance over the terms of use/privacy policies of things (especially facebook) because they are too long, incorporate terminology that doesn’t make any sense to us, and because if we don’t just accept, we won’t have access to the site. I’m in a class right now that focuses on facebook and social networking sites. If you were to read the privacy policy, you’d see that after every claim that is slightly suspicious, something is immediately said about how this claim would give users comfort, ease, or aid them in some way. Has facebook gone public yet? What if (once it does}the company goes bankrupt? Do all of our profiles get deleted? What if money is tight and the corporation needs to start pushing for more money…and they start spaming us with advertising messages? I think that it will be interesting to see what happens in a few years.
Lihy E.
27 Nov 08 at 2:17 pm
Facebook is a great tool that a ton of people utilize virtually daily. I know I do. Anyway as with any website that requires you to make an account or even when installing a new program on your computer, there is always a privacy policy. Around 95% of people head straight for the “I accept” button. What we are really accepting is really of no matter to us whatsoever. Any information we post, we trust will not be taken from us or will be used only in rare cases for a good intent. What we fail to realize is that those policy agreements can include lots of little stipulations and things that we would actually not approve of. But does it really matter?? We are much more willing to simply agree to their terms and play our “Call of Duty 4″ game.
JD
5 Dec 08 at 6:55 pm