Tim Finin sent an alarming note across the Interesting-People list this morning. (And I've borrowed his "Subject" line, with the emphasis on your mine.)
CU's Consumerist has a post on a change in Facebook’s Terms of
Service agreement that became effective on 4 February: Facebook’s
New Terms Of Service: "We Can Do Anything We Want With Your
Content. Forever."
It does not appear to me that this is an exaggeration.
What Tim's referring to is this article at The Consumerist. In it, they write:
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.
They provide this excerpt from the current Facebook terms-of-service agreement (which, by the way, you'll need Javascript enabled to read -- obviously very poor practice on their part, as merely reading a TOS agreement never requires active scripting of any kind):
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.
That's a major change from the old Facebook terms of service agreement (courtesy of The Wayback Machine at The Internet Archive), and both the Consumerist and Tim go on to point out that the major change is that the new agreement survives the termination of your account. Now, even if you quit, they still own everything you've ever put up -- forever.
I think if perhaps you're an artist, or a photographer, or a musician, or a writer, or someone whose livelihood depends on your ability to control your own content, this might be more than a little unsettling. Or suppose you're a political candidate? An activist group?
It gets better. Have you used the service since February 4? If so, then you've already agreed to this new terms-of-service agreement. Yes, they've quite effectively Catch-22'd their users, since of course if you now wanted to delete your content and close your account...you'd have to use the service, which then invokes:
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.
Neatly done.
Oh, and the cherry on top is that the new TOS agreement that you've already agreed to without knowing that you've agreed to it specifies binding arbitration -- that is, you've agreed not to take them to court over this.
Now, I'm not an attorney, and of course this is not legal advice, but it does look to me like they've just taken possession of everything in every account that's used the service since the new TOS went into effect. (Part of my reason for posting this diary is that I'm sure many people who are attorneys will have something to say about this, and my guess is that their remarks will be considerably more well-informed than mine.)