Facebook: All Your Content Are Belong To Us, Forever
Word reached me through the grapevine that Facebook has altered its terms of service (that legalese you don’t read when you sign up) to essentially grant itself a perpetual and all-encompassing right to use any content you upload to the site for all time, even when you delete your account:
You are solely responsible for the User Content that you Post on or through the Facebook Service. 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. You represent and warrant that you have all rights and permissions to grant the foregoing licenses.
What does this mean in plain English? Well, it’s hard to tell, because the language is overbroad and does not begin to address a number of thorny legal questions, but it sounds like Facebook has given itself the right to take any content you post there–pictures, posts, games, notes, etc.–and use it for its own purposes, without your permission and certainly without any intent of offering you a cut.
First, the logistics of this don’t make sense. If I create a blog post here, on my own blog, and use the Facebook button to share it there, does Facebook now own my blog post? If I post photos from another site (Flickr, Picasa, Webshots) to Facebook (rather than use their gimpy photo interface), do they own those photos? Does Facebook’s terms of service trump Flickr’s much friendlier Creative Commons license (which I use both for my blog and my photostream)? If I use a third-party bookmarklet app to post content to Facebook rather than their “Share This” button, does this agreement apply?
Second, the fact that Facebook would willingly employ such a draconian overreach for their legal agreeement tells me that they realize how little value their service really provides on its own. It’s just a giant Web hosting service mixed with a bulletin board, and not a very good one at that. The real value in Facebook–or any social network–is the content. The users. The people who create and share their experiences in digital form for others to enjoy. This is, essentially, another case of non-creative types attempting to profit off the labor of the creative class and offering them nothing in return.
My first instinct was simply to delete my Facebook account and stick to posting things here, but that’s the cheap way out, and it doesn’t negate the fact that practically every “social sharing” service out there has its own terms of service that are nearly as bad, though FB’s definitely takes the cake. More importantly, we have to be willing to fight for the basic right to retain control of how our content is shared and to determine the terms by which it is broadcast into the larger world.
As a devoted supporter of free culture, I want people to remix, reshape, and rebuild my work in ways that enrich the world. I want them to improve off what I do. But what I don’t want is a company that provides me nothing more than a simple networking platform to take my creative efforts and labor and grab them whole cloth for the purposes of that all-important “monetization.”
So what can you do?
- Don’t use any social networking service as your principal platform. Build your own blog or Website from scratch and host it independently. Boztopia.com is built off Wordpress.org and hosted on BlueHost, for instance. It’ll cost you a few bucks, but it’s really not that hard to do, and it ensures you will retain control of whatever you post, whenever you post it.
- Read the Terms of Service of every site you use. You never know when your favorite social networking hub or other Web-based service will pull some shady shit on you, so be prepared by knowing what they ask of you up front when you sign up.
- License your works. Creative Commons offers a range of licenses for you to publish your content under, from a carte blanche option to remix and reuse anything, to a total lockdown “Don’t share” license. The license I use is “Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike,” which means that anyone can create derivative or new works based on what I do, as long as they 1) credit me, 2) agree to the same terms of the license, and 3) do not use it for commercial enterprises.
- Raise a stink. This isn’t the first time Facebook has attempted to overreach by violating its users’ rights, and each time, they’ve backed down in the face of public outcry. Make them listen and understand. Form FB groups and demand that the terms of service be changed to something more palatable. Nothing works as well as public shaming when it comes to making companies play fair.
I’ll still be using Facebook, but I’ll damn sure not be hosting any photos there, and I won’t be posting anything of consequence beyond my daily updates (which are pretty prosaic). My life is mine, and I decide how it is shared with the world at large. The same is true for you.
February 16th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
wow, I don’t even know how to respond…
February 16th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
That’s some pretty scary stuff, I’ve been using Facebook less and less over the past few months because of issues like this.
February 16th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
I don’t even know how to react… but I think we should start a group on FB to complain about this abuse, beacuse it is clearly an abuse. Thank for sharing Martin!
February 16th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
And that is why I refuse to have a Facebook.
If your blog is build on the Wordpress platform, does that mean I can add it to my own Wordpress blogroll? I’d like to. I have a WP blog- Light-Headed Thoughts (sunfell.wordpress.com).
February 16th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
All licenses and sub-licenses being granted to Facebook are subject to the same restrictions placed by our privacy settings (subsection “i” under “Licensing”).
Here is their privacy policy: http://www.facebook.com/policy.php
I believe (from a cursory read-through) that our privacy settings control whether or not Facebook can profit from what we post.
February 16th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Shelli,
I know. It’s terribly underhanded and uncool, isn’t it? The best thing to do is to make a big public push against it and force them to back down or amend the TOS to something more favorable.
February 16th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Chris,
The frightening part is that even if you delete your account completely and remove all your content, FB will retain copies of it on their servers to use in perpetuity. That’s why I’m not leaving the service–it won’t solve the underlying problem. I do agree that it’s wise to minimize what you put there.
February 16th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Rolando,
You’re quite welcome. I definitely agree that starting an FB group to protest this is one smart thing to do. Use their own tools against them.
February 16th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Sunfell,
You can link any blog to any other blog, regardless of who hosts it or how. I dunno if there’s anything specific about WordPress, but my blog is built with the WordPress.org software (and designed by my wonderful sister). It’s not actually hosted at WordPress.com.
February 16th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
Jon,
On a second read-through, I think you’re right. But this also doesn’t solve the underlying problem.
See, there’s an insidious bit of social engineering going on here. If I make all of my content private and unfindable, what’s the point of being on Facebook? I might as well just keep a diary. And I think the people who write these TOS know that…they know the inherent social pressure that can be exerted to get people using these services.
That’s why simply locking down or deleting your content, while wise and necessary, isn’t enough.
February 16th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
If I make all of my content private and unfindable, what’s the point of being on Facebook?
*g* That’s precisely why I’m attracted to the service! I *like* Facebook because it keeps my life private and unsearchable. I have a separate, external blog for the ‘public me’.
I agree that if one is using FB to promote one’s work that the new TOS could easily be problematic. (Dependent of course, on what sort of works are being advertised or promoted.) Or if they unknowingly leave their personal information, photos, notes, videos, marketplace postings, etc., open to the public.
However, I suspect the average FB user has aims similar to my own and have their own separate blogs or websites for self-promotion. My friends who are business owners, photographers, writers or authors post frequent external links to their work, yet are cognizant enough of the nature of internet copyright and social media sites that they don’t post material they would like to protect under copyright natively on FB.
Of course, I could be wrong.
My experience on FB is quite limited and is further curtailed by the people I know and have friended, who tend to be more ‘net savvy than most.
February 16th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Jon,
Very true! I had the same experience with LiveJournal–I blocked it from showing up in Google searches, because I wanted my own space and didn’t want the crazy crap I wrote about when I was younger coming back to haunt me later. It looks like you made a similar decision.
The smartest and best thing for anyone to do is use a service like Facebook as a marketplace or bazaar to hawk one’s wares–in this case, their content–but not to actually store the content there.
February 17th, 2009 at 12:35 am
I’m interested in your reply to this rebuttal by Mark Zuckerberg:
http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=54434097130
You raise as many important points as he does. The whole point of contention seems to come down to this: Can we even legally host your pictures without rights to them?
I’m not one to accept an owner’s plea to not take a privacy policy at only its face value, but the “balance” he’s trying to find is a tricky one. This seems like it was a move on their part to open up commentary by taking it a step too far. Maybe it’s not the best way, but nobody would have been talking about it if they just didn’t go ahead and do it.
In the end though, I’m curious if the change is even legal. Is everything posted on their under the old terms now under these terms even when I didn’t have a chance to review it? It feels like theft via licensing which all sorts of companies are trying to pull these days.
February 17th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
I think it’s just basic legalese to make it possible for them to use what you post in the feeds that go to your friends and networks. For Facebook to work at all, you have to give them those rights – otherwise, it is just a diary that no one else can see or interact with. For example – you write the most brilliant 140 character update ever written in the history of facebook, but you don’t give facebook the right to do anything with it. So, no one ever sees that update because you didn’t give facebook permission to repurpose it or distribute it. It never shows up on any of your friends’ home pages or friends pages – oh, and your profile basically doesn’t exist either even for people you added as friends. Your brilliance is lost forever.
Now, the part about keeping it forever and using it for advertising purposes – that’s a different issue. I agree it’s creepy and not necessarily in the best interests of the users. But, then again, Facebook isn’t a charity. Just like Giant keeps track of what I buy every week and uses that to target ads and promotions (what? you thought that Giant card was just for your benefit??), there is a trade off in using any “free” service. Decide what trade offs you’re comfortable with and operate accordingly.
February 17th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
Wow, I am not even sure how to respond to this. Terrifying. I recently (about 6 months ago) deleted the bulk of my photos and personal information–the idea that it is still there for Facebook itself is just insane.
Thank you for this.
February 18th, 2009 at 4:36 am
Kassy,
Glad to help. Make sure to spread the word to all of our mutual friends and acquaintances so they can make an informed decision about whether to keep using FB.
And I hope you, personally, are doing well, wherever you are.
February 18th, 2009 at 4:44 am
Didi,
You make a very good point, but inadvertently, you also prove *my* point.
See, those “loyalty cards” you mention can also be used against you. For example, a record of a person’s shopping habits could be used against them in a divorce or other legal proceeding, even if the items they buy (condoms, for example) are totally explainable and normal. Moreover, they can also be sold to third parties without your consent and used to get you on all kinds of mailing lists. Even if you want targeted ads sent your way–and I don’t mind that, personally–the default should be “opt out,” not “opt in.”
Facebook, like every social networking system before it, is faced with the dilemma of how to pay the bills when everything is free. LiveJournal faced this issue several years before, and solved it by introducing paid tiers of membership, where those who paid got access to cooler features, more userpics, etc. That’s a fair trade, and one I’d accept. But people don’t pay to use the platform because they like the platform–they pay for the content. You don’t go to FB just because it’s FB. You go because you want to know what your friends are up to and keep track of their lives. The *content* is the destination, not the platform.
And Facebook has absolutely no legal grounds to claim ownership over someone else’s content for their own purposes. Their best move would be to backtrack on this and partner with Creative Commons to enable various levels of licensing of content, all with the content creator’s permission.
February 18th, 2009 at 4:49 am
Andrew,
Having read Zuckerberg’s response, I have to say that if this was his idea of opening a conversation, the execs running the show are more tone-deaf than I thought.
Facebook has a right to legally claim a license to our content if we put it up there to host–otherwise they wouldn’t be able to share it with others. That, again, is fine. But what they do *not* have the right to do is claim full ownership of the content. They didn’t take those photos or write those posts–the FB members did. To claim control of someone else’s content without giving them the option to choose is the same struggle between creative types and business types that’s been going on since the dawn of man.
As I said above, Facebook should partner with Creative Commons and offer its members licensing agreements that they control. If Flickr can do it, why can’t they?