facebook postings = free license for facecbook?

mikeli77

I'm disturbed by facebook's "terms of use". Sounds like facebook has a free license to any/all content posted. Anyone else leary of using Facebook to drive traffic to their smugmug site by posting links and/or photos? Or maybe I'm just paranoid?

Here's what has got me spooked:




from http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=439:
Do I retain the copyright and other legal rights to material I upload to Facebook?
Yes, you retain the copyright to your content. When you upload your content, you grant us a license to use and display that content. For more information please visit our Terms of Use, which contain information about intellectual property, as well as your privileges and responsibilities as a Facebook user.

where the terms of use indicate: http://en-gb.facebook.com/terms.php?ref=pf

Sharing Your Content and Information You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how we share your content through your privacy and application settings. In order for us to use certain types of content and provide you with Facebook, you agree to the following:

1. For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos ("IP content"), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License"). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account (except to the extent your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it).

Qarik

that only applies to photos uploaded to FB. Not links. Its not like they can own "yahoo" material if you posted a yahoo link.

rich56k

facebook users do your homework...

mikeli77 wrote:

I'm disturbed by facebook's "terms of use". Sounds like facebook has a free license to any/all content posted. Anyone else leary of using Facebook to drive traffic to their smugmug site by posting links and/or photos? Or maybe I'm just paranoid?

Here's what has got me spooked:




from http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=439:
Do I retain the copyright and other legal rights to material I upload to Facebook?
Yes, you retain the copyright to your content. When you upload your content, you grant us a license to use and display that content. For more information please visit our Terms of Use, which contain information about intellectual property, as well as your privileges and responsibilities as a Facebook user.

where the terms of use indicate: http://en-gb.facebook.com/terms.php?ref=pf

Sharing Your Content and Information You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how we share your content through your privacy and application settings. In order for us to use certain types of content and provide you with Facebook, you agree to the following:

1. For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos ("IP content"), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License"). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account (except to the extent your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it).

Hi Mikeli77,

Yes they are something be aware of - many just click to agree to TOS on most sites - and yes they are worth reading as you've discovered...I was totally spooked after checking out the following

Thanks to fellow dgrinner Pupator for doing some homework on facebook...

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?p=1047356#post1047356

check these out-and weigh your options - i personally wouldn't go near f/book with a ten foot pole - but thats just me -after reading the links - this zuckerberg dude is like a... well...a real ethical....gee, i'll let you decide !


one of the better ones (towards the bottom-the wikipedia link- scroll down to 'connectU.com lawsuit') is about him settling the lawsuit brought by his former employers for $65 million just to keep them quiet regarding him stealing the code they hired him to create!

The world needs more folks like you that read the fine print before clicking that little box!!

-rich56k

Angelo

mikeli77 wrote:

I'm disturbed by facebook's "terms of use". Sounds like facebook has a free license to any/all content posted. Anyone else leary of using Facebook to drive traffic to their smugmug site by posting links and/or photos? Or maybe I'm just paranoid?

Here's what has got me spooked:




from http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=439:
Do I retain the copyright and other legal rights to material I upload to Facebook?
Yes, you retain the copyright to your content. When you upload your content, you grant us a license to use and display that content. For more information please visit our Terms of Use, which contain information about intellectual property, as well as your privileges and responsibilities as a Facebook user.

where the terms of use indicate: http://en-gb.facebook.com/terms.php?ref=pf

Sharing Your Content and Information You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how we share your content through your privacy and application settings. In order for us to use certain types of content and provide you with Facebook, you agree to the following:

1. For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos ("IP content"), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License"). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account (except to the extent your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it).

I see nothing wrong.

Photog4Christ

You do realize that basically what this is saying is: If you post your copyrighted images to Facebook, then we can display them without you suing our butts!


Nothing wrong here, move along now, nothing to see here.

Pupator

Photog4Christ wrote:

You do realize that basically what this is saying is: If you post your copyrighted images to Facebook, then we can display them without you suing our butts!

Nothing wrong here, move along now, nothing to see here.

I disagree. This says "we can display [your pictures] without you suing our butts":

SmugMug TOS wrote:

You retain the copyright in any User Content you post on the Site. SmugMug neither has nor wants any ownership of your Content. However, by uploading and/or posting any User Content to the Site, you grant SmugMug a perpetual, nonexclusive and royalty-free right to use the User Content and the name that is submitted in connection with such User Content, as is reasonably necessary to display the User Content, provide the Services and to facilitate, at Content Owner's direction, the license of Photos or the sale of Products on the Site.

Facebook's TOS says, "we have a transferable, sub-licensable...license to use (?) any content you post on or in connection with Facebook"

What does "use" include? To whom can they license my work? With or without royalties to that sub-licensee?




Smugmug makes it clear what they're going to do with my content. 1) Display it. 2) use it to provide Services (a defined term) 3) Sell it at my direction. They say that they will only use my content "as is reasonably necessary to do these things." That's a user-friendly (and content-owner oriented) agreement. Facebook's is wide open. Facebook can (and does, I'm told) use your pictures in ads targeted at your friends or use your content in "Facebook apps." When they come up with some new way to use your content they'll be able to do that to. They might add privacy controls for it later but they've clearly shown that their motto is "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission."

xxclixxx

Well it was a lot worse before they re-wrote it that way ;-) They re-edited it to try to clear up that it was only for use on the site. The whole thing about if you delete it, it's not necessarily gone is because you can send a photo to someone else and if they haven't seen it yet it's still in their inbox. So you may delete it, but they haven't yet. They don't want you flipping out that the person you sent it to still has it.

happysmileylady

There was a piece on my local news about facebook using pictures that are posted as parts of ads on their site.

THAT, I don't like.

colourbox

happysmileylady wrote:

There was a piece on my local news about facebook using pictures that are posted as parts of ads on their site.
THAT, I don't like.

There was a rumor being passed around the other week claiming this. The news station probably picked it up and reported the rumor as if it was true. Facebook's side is that an ad network violated their terms and was eventually blocked. Here is Facebook's side of the story.
http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=110636457130

Personally I prefer to link to where my pics are under my control, on Smugmug.