The Consumerist has posted a story about the new Facebook Terms of Service. I’m not a lawyer, but it certainly sounds like Facebook is claiming the right to use any of the content (photos, videos, notes) uploaded by their users, in any way they see fit — even if the user removes the content from Facebook and closes his or her account.
Facebook users are understandably nervous about this development (though I’m not sure that most of them know — when I logged into my Facebook account, I was not notified of any change in the TOS). There are great discussions in the Cosumerist story comments, with many people who clearly do have legal expertise commenting, and a lot of irate comments on the Digg page for this story, too. There are also several Facebook groups discussing the new TOS, too.
The issue I’m concerned about is: what does this mean for brands and celebrities who are using Facebook to connect with their customers or fans?? Does Facebook now own the rights to the image of Christian Bale as Batman that is posted on the Dark Knight page? (I checked and there does not seem to be a separate TOS for the Business pages.) Or what about media brands that use Facebook to re-distribute some of their content?
At the very least, brands that care about both protecting their content and engaging with customers will be keeping their legal teams busy analyzing this. Let us know if you have any more insights…
UPDATE:
The Industry Standard has published an email they received from a Facebook spokesman, claiming that Facebook is not claiming ownership of material uploaded by users, and were simply trying to clarify the Terms to be “more consistent with the behavior of the site.” The email goes on to draw the analogy beween using an email service to send a message to another user – which then doesn’t disappear from the server even if the sender deletes it. To me this analogy doesn’t quite work – I publish content on my page, in addition to writing on other people’s pages or using Facebook for messaging. IMHO, Facebook has a little more clarifying to do …
UPDATE #2:
Mark Zuckerberg has written a blog post addressing the issue (“On Facebook, People Own and Control Their Information”); with commentary on Mashable.
