Big news a few days ago was the facebook changed their terms of service agreement to basically say they can do whatever they want with your content…forever. As the Consumerist clearly points out, among one of the changes was this:
“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.”
a.k.a they own your soul. The image below that my pal @gumshoo sent over, pretty much explains it all.
eh, not so fast. Mark Zuckerberg or M Zizzle as I call him (ya, I’m cool like that) has decided to change their terms of service BACK to the way they were. According to the Facebook Master (yes Mark): (also here on techcrunch)
“Going forward, we’ve decided to take a new approach towards developing our terms. We concluded that returning to our previous terms was the right thing for now. As I said yesterday, we think that a lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective so we don’t plan to leave it there for long.”
So that means everything is fine and dandy right? ah hah you fools! How dare you think that facebook would let you get off the hook so easy. Marky Mark also cleverly added in that their will be another addition of the TOS soon with substantial changes coming:
“Our next version will be a substantial revision from where we are now. It will reflect the principles I described yesterday around how people share and control their information, and it will be written clearly in language everyone can understand. Since this will be the governing document that we’ll all live by, Facebook users will have a lot of input in crafting these terms.”
Basically facebook said, “yes we are going to screw you over and keep your content forever…just not yet.” Hmm, how’s myspace doing these days…?
Thoughts? I know you’ve got ’em!
Jacob,
I have to somewhat disagree. I think facebook did a really good job of listening to its community and reacting quickly. They obviously wanted to keep their Terms of Service the way it was, but when it became clear that the community was not happy, they gave it up. I did pick up on that part that you quoted where he says that they are still going to change the TOS. I think they are really going to think about these changes, and will be damn sure to express them clearly. One of the better things that facebook said was that they HAVE to include a lot of these things in their TOS in order to be able to provide its users with the services that they want. Its the community that is conflicted because they want to have their cake and eat it too. Overall I'd say facebook handled the situation very well. I wrote a blog post in more detail after they reverted back last night. Check it out if you like.
Thanks,
Dave
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I absolutely hate the changes that you all are making to Facebook. Facebook was a way for me to catch up with friends. I am not on facebook everday and it was nice to be able to check on their status whenever I wanted which sometimes is only once a week. Now I can't do that so its much harder to keep in touch. What in the world were you thinking please change it back to the way it was so much better the old way.
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I have not much time, but I've got many useful things here, love it!
can you please go back to the old facebook .. its so confusing ! [ the new one ) smh.