I just removed ALL MY PHOTOGRAPHS AND MY SO-CALLED FAN PAGE FROM FACEBOOK. Yes – I decided that they were being way too tricky. Their language reminds me of something from a Marx Brothers movie. You own your photos. (That’s good to know). Once posted, FACEBOOK can do whatever they want with them. Huh? And believe me, when I say that this is tricky, it is tricky and meant to be so. In fact, the devil is in the lack of details and the circuitous language.
From FACEBOOK ToS (May 18, 2011) Who know what it will be when you read this.
Sharing Your Content and Information
You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition:
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”).
[so what do you need to change in your privacy settings so that Facebook DOES NOT have permission to use your photos for free?]
This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.
When you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others).
When you use an application, your content and information is shared with the application. We require applications to respect your privacy, and your agreement with that application will control how the application can use, store, and transfer that content and information. (To learn more about Platform, read our Privacy Policy and Platform Page.)
When you publish content or information using the “everyone” setting, it means that you are allowing everyone, including people off of Facebook, to access and use that information, and to associate it with you (i.e., your name and profile picture).
We always appreciate your feedback or other suggestions about Facebook, but you understand that we may use them without any obligation to compensate you for them (just as you have no obligation to offer them).
NOW FOR THE PRIVACY HUNT
EVERYTHING ON THIS EDIT PROFILE page is about “who can see” what you post. So far I don’t see where to set privacy settings to not allow Facebook to use my intellectual property. Oh, maybe it’s here:
From what I can figure – everything and everywhere it says, “who can see” various items. And the Terms of Service is saying that whoever you allow to SEE what you post can also USE IT? It’s beyond my ability to comprehend.
You could have left your snaps on facebook. May 21st is almost here. I saw a poster on the subway and a Korean lady was handing out flyers at Grand Central…Paying your taxes last month was also a mistake. I don’t know how to make emoticans but if I did, it would be the smiley face with horns, because that’s where they say I’m headed…
Yeah, I think F.B. are being tricky too
but I doubt that they’ll take your images
and make posters, or post-cards with
them, or sell them to publishers as
material for book covers..
I try to keep my F.B. images too small
for printing. I’ve thought about watermarking
but never got around to it.
One day though I too will remove all my F.B.
images, and then start all over again
Stephen – I doubt it too. But it just rubs me the wrong way. They are constantly doing things that I find dishonest. Example – recently they just added a BING app to my wall. I didn’t ask for it. I know that BING and FACEBOOK are trying to compete with Google – but FB routinely does stuff that I find disingenuous at best.
If they did decide to use one of your photos for cards, I don’t think you’d have a case.
DB
It appears that Facebook has a program, like YouTube, that identifies copywrited music. I know this because I recently used a copywrited song in one of my videos and got a message from Facebook disallowing the uploading of the video and warning me not to try it again.
Of course, I tried it again and guess what? I got another message saying that I had permanently lost permission to upload any more videos. So now I can’t directly upload any videos to Facebook. I get around that by uploading the video to YouTube or my WordPress blog and then linking it to Facebook.
In other words, it’s okay to link a music video from another site to Facebook, which millions of kids do everyday, but it’s not legal to use the same music as an accompaniment to an original video, even if that video is not being used to make money. I understand that incorporating someone’s work of art into your own work is not right if you do not get permission from the artist, but then disseminating someone’s work of art without permission should also be wrong. There are probably more people downloading copywrited YouTube music videos to promote their own sites than people like me who create original videos with other artist’s songs simply for the pleasure of it.
The truth is that anyone can easily download the audio portion of a copywrited music video and not pay for the music. Most of the time, when I want a song to accompany a video, I pay the $ .99 to iTunes, but that doesn’t give me permission to use the song on my own original video. Sometimes YouTube will send a message that the song is copywrited, but it’s okay to use. But other times, YouTube will remove the offending video from its site. They do not disallow you from ever uploading other videos, like Facebook has done to me, but simply remove the video. This has happened to me several times on YouTube when I tried using Dylan songs on my videos. On WordPress, I can upload anything without a problem.
So when I hear that Facebook can appropriate original work put up on its site without paying the artist, it really amuses me. It’s okay for them to steal from its users, but it’s not okay for a user like me to “steal” from someone else.
Lester – it’s a question of who has the sharpest lawyers. I really do understand how easy it is for anyone to steal anything that is in digital format. You yourself know that you could easily take images from my site and turn them into a book and not let anyone know where you got the photos unless you got found out – and if you were smart you would take photos from people that were from countries that we didn’t have copyright agreements with.
But Facebook just makes their intent too transparent. For example – have you ever noticed the DOWNLOAD button next to your images in an album. I mean, it’s true that anyone could download via a million different ways screen images but does FACEBOOK need to make it a part of their interface?
That is plain outrageous. Even when I’m practically giving away (and that is prob. going to change) downloads t $20 – it clearly says that this is for personal use only. Facebook, as a general platform, rubs me the wrong way. I can’t completely ignore it – as it is second to Google in terms of users – though the users and their searches are still very different.
I never did have someone say – I searched for b&w photography on Facebook and that’s how I found you. But that is the most common way people find me using Google.
When I took down my old site over a year and half ago, to still give myself a web presence, I made a facebook page… yeah, that only lasted about six months, and then removed it! Like you, I just don’t trust them, always seem to be changing the rules on things, and each time, making the privacy and UI things more tricky and hidden, etc.
Right now, I couldn’t be more proud to NOT have anything to do with facebook, and have no affiliation with them. With my new site, I am in no way going to incorporate an accompanying facebook page, because, why?! Just because everybody else and their dog has one? It amuses me to see businesses, no matter what business they are in and do, big or small, predominantly promoting the fact that one can follow and friend them on facebook, thinking that it makes them hip and with the times, no matter that the whole facebook thing is really just a joke fad that will hopefully go the way of MySpace sooner than later, when the current fad fashionability of it finally wears off.
I felt the same about Twitter (I just have this anti-what-everybody-else-is-doing streak in me)… but, have had a change of heart about Twitter, as I can find a legitimate reason to pair my website up with them, to send off little updates, tweets to supplement the content my site will present… I really think the whole Twitter thing can be a good marketing, networking, resourcing tool for one’s endeavors, if used and done with that in mind.
JPH – Well put. I’ve done my six month (maybe a little more or less) experiment with Facebook and they are just scheming too much. Whether they will be a social network we look back on like MySpace – I have no idea. I hope so.
Twitter is completely different. First off, they really haven’t even figured out how to make money, although they are trying now with “promoted” ads. Which is just fine so long as the ads continue to say promoted.
But Twitter reminds me of early ham radio operators. Short bursts of coded messages. You found operators you would tune to in the middle of the night. No – I actually didn’t do ham operating – but my father had a set and could take and send morse code. I knew enough to understand the gist of stuff.
But Twitter is along those lines and frankly – the owners really do seem committed to keeping it a fair, open resource.
A Facebook example: I never asked to have a BING app. But they installed one without telling me. Why – because BING and FACEBOOK are trying to take on GOOGLE. Now I have nothing against BING. In fact I want to be found in BING. I just want FB to be honest and straightforward about what they do and that ain’t them.
There are other social networks out there and I’ve been looking into them. Also other picture sharing sites that DON’T say your stuff is yours but WE CAN DO WHAT WE WANT WITH IT whenever we want to. I’m going to do a post about the OTHER picture sites soon.