

People can post links in Facebook to your content just by copying and pasting the URL, but if you want to save them a few keystrokes by putting a link or a widget on your site, Facebook claims that you’ve granted them a whole mess of rights. Unbelievable–and unique, as far as I can tell. This one kills me: Facebook claims it can do whatever it wants with your content if you put a Share on Facebook link on your web page.Nobody else (of those I looked at) would dream of that mostly they specifically state that their rights to your content end when you remove the content from their site or delete your account. Facebook apparently wants to keep all its rights to your stuff after you remove it from Facebook, and even after you delete your Facebook account they just removed the lines that specified that their rights end when your content comes down.


Here’s the rundown, which I go through in more detail below: Facebook’s claims to your content are extraordinarily grabby and arrogant. It looks as though the finger-pointing at the Bush robots.txt file wasn’t justified, for instance, and I was guilty of spreading that story.Ĭonclusion? Go ahead and be outraged. With today’s outrage over Facebook’s newly altered Terms of Service at its peak, I figured I’d do a quick comparison of their terms of service as regards user-uploaded content to the terms specified by other social networking sites, just to see if said outrage is fully justified.
Picasa web album deny update#
UPDATE 5/8/09: Facebook revised its Terms of Service, aka the “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.” Here’s their blog post about it, and here’s the current policy.
