Cherryflava

Facebook to the world: We own you suckers – now go get us a beer

Posted on 17. Feb, 2009 by Jonathan Cherry in Totally Whack

See this is what happens when you have Friday the 13th, Valentine's Day and an American public holiday all rolled into one weekend – the geeks get bored and start reading the 'Terms of Service' of a major content-sharing website that 170 million people worldwide belong to.

In a drunken, doped up haze they then stumble across a line in the legal code that states that since you posted that photograph of you and your skanky friends, totally wasted at the Met after winning 50 cents on your R100 by betting on Pocket Power – Facebook now owns the right to do whatever they want with the image.

No questions asked. No money passed onto you after they sell the image to J&B to be used in an international ad campaign. You're screwed – but hey, at leasted you got poked as a reward for a while.

Hello – it's a free service people. Ever heard the saying; 'There's no such thing as a free lunch'? Well there's no such thing as a free online service – you're going to pay [dearly] somehow. Just be sure to read the fine print if you want to know how bad it's going to hurt in the morning.

Here's the legal bit that's got everybody worried:

"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."

and this was just added…

"You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you
choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will
automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may
retain archived copies of your User Content."

More:

Misguided intent + Lawyers = Social media disaster – Adrants
Facebook: Relax, we won't sell your photos [snigger] – CNET

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