HomeNewsWorldwide NewsFacebook grabs rights to users photos

Facebook grabs rights to users photos

18 February 2009

Tens of thousands of Facebook users are protesting after the social-networking site granted itself the rights to users' photos, wall posts and all other information for ever.

When the company updated its terms of use on February 4th, it deleted a provision that said users could remove their content at any time. This change was made without consultation or advanced notice.

It caused a furious response from members after a popular consumer rights advocacy blog Consumerist.com pointed out the implications of the move this week.

'Want to close your account? Good for you, but Facebook still has the right to do whatever it wants with your old content. They can even sublicense it if they want,' Chris Walters wrote on the blog.

More than 25,000 people have since joined Facebook groups to protest at the retrospective changes, with some threatening to deactivate their accounts. They said it could mean embarrassing or offensive material posted about them on the site will be kept and used again by Facebook, even if it had been removed.

Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, was prompted to defend the move on his own blog. 'On Facebook, people own their information and control who they share it with,' he wrote.

In the meantime the company has temporarily returned to their previous terms of use.

A message was sent to all 175million Facebook members. It reads: 'Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.'

Mr Zuckerberg insists new terms are necessary to reflect the fact that friends may retain a copy of that message or other information once a user shares it with them.

'Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message,' Mr Zuckerberg said.

'We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like e-mail work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear.'

But privacy advocates were not reassured. Simon Davies, from Privacy International, said: 'This is a huge breach of trust and a blatant example of them protecting their company's liability at the expense of privacy. It makes hypocrites of Facebook and their claims of protecting members.'

The rapidly growing site has had several run-ins with users over its short history.

In late 2007, for example, a tracking tool called 'Beacon' caught users off-guard by broadcasting information about their shopping habits and activities at other websites.

After initially defending the practice, Facebook ultimately allowed users to turn Beacon off by checking a box on the Applications tab under Privacy Settings.

Source: Mail Online