Posted on 02/16/2009 6:35:11 PM PST by BigBlueJon
Once a Facebook member, always a member. The Consumerist blog noticed Sunday that the social-networking giant had quietly made a change to its user Terms of Service (TOS) on Feb. 4.
Facebook now declares that it has a perpetual license to use anything you post to your own Facebook page — even if you terminate your account.
Here's the licensing part of the legalese, which sounds bad enough: "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." .......
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
How do they track who agreed to the old terms vs the new? Accounts set up under the old would not be bound by the new unless they agreed to it subsequently.
So does that mean my calling Obama a Marxist Commie and a three yr old having a temper tantrum on my Facebook page can be used against me someday? Cool.
Just make sure that if you do call Obama a Marxist, you do it on the FreeRepublic on Facebook group:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=logo#/group.php?gid=26012226159&ref=ts
Microsoft tried to do that years ago by claiming it “owned” the contents of all emails sent by users. It didn’t last long.
Who knows? It’s a bit distressing.
Don’t publish any blogs there.
already a member of THE group.
Just looking for an excuse to pimp the group. :->
Why not, I mean if the Government can own people, then why can’t a company own your thoughts, feelings, and yes, even your social network. [/cynic]
I have a TOB (Terms of Browsing) agreement on my computer. Any data that is transmitted and enters my network, I claim a permanent license to use as I see fit. :)
Are they a division of Columbia House ?
As to the archive thing ... think of the technical difficulty of purging off a specific user's information off of any backup file. That would be darned near impossible. What sounds ominous might just be CYA for backup management.
I closed my account a couple of months ago and noted—with some dismay—that they said all I had to do was log back in and my account would be reactivated as if I’d never left.
Many sites say you agree to all future TOS changes and it is your responsibility to keep checking the TOS for changes. I was just on a site like that recently.
That would not apply retroactively to items posted BEFORE such changes.
bttt
I agree. But most people don’t closely read TOS in the first place, never mind keep up with changes over the years. It will be interesting to see how and if this plays out.
So even tho you have a private fb where only friends and family have access, fb could release information you have posted to any organization it chooses?
And the moral of this story.......
Don’t ever put anything on a computer site that you would not want made public.
There are going to be some very embarrassed young people in the years ahead. Lots of youthful stupidity out there.......
Gratefully, our high school and college yearbooks are on our bookshelf. It is bad enough that our kids had to read some of that stupid stuff written in them.
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