I myself am a member of Facebook. Like most of us I saw them as a gentle giant earning good money by allowing us to make new friends and business associates from the comfort of our homes. Not so true.

I’m no web Guru, but I try to keep all my photos scattered throughout the web small enough that they’re useless if stolen. I try to take precautions, but there are so many pages of TOS’s (terms of service) on the many sites I navigate, I admit, I don’t usually read them at gathering places such as FB.

I will be more studious in the future. I never suspected what I was agreeing to by uploading a sampling of my works for friends and associates to view. Do you?

Member, Carolyn D’Alessandro, sent me this link. Call me naive, but I didn’t know what rights Facebook claims until I read this post at The Consumerist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Facebook's New Terms Of Service: "We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever."  
By Chris Walters Feb 15 2009
The Consumerist

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later.* 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….more Facebook Do What They Want

Even if you signed up at Facebook before the new TOS was in effect, beware the phrase, “these terms are subject to change at any time without notification” or any similar wording.

I take responsibility for not reading the TOS before signing up. My bad. And I immediately deleted my photos from Facebook, but in reality this is virtually useless (irony intended). Once uploaded they can be forever in cache. Still, I know now not to upload to Facebook any photos for which I wish to retain copyright, no matter the size, no matter the watermark.

Read Read Facebook’s Terms of Service

Follow the Follies

Facebook Reassures Users in Wake of Service Terms Change
February 16, 2009
BreitBart.com

Facebook on Monday said it is not usurping users’ content despite changing service terms to claim “perpetual worldwide license” to anything posted at the social-networking website....more Facebook Reassures

Facebook’s Terms of Use: From Bad to Beyond Worse
by Jim Goldstein
February 17, 2009

The latest buzz across the web in the past couple of days has been the increased awareness to the outrageous modifications to the Terms of Use (ToU) at Facebook and the impact to Creatives, particularly photographers….more Bad to Worse

Facebook’s Terms of Use Update
by Jim Goldstein
February 18, 2009

FaceBook Responds to Uprising With Terms Update
& Invitation to Participate in New FB Bill of Rights
Update on Terms
by Mark Zuckerberg

A couple of weeks ago, we revised our terms of use hoping to clarify some parts for our users. Over the past couple of days, we received a lot of questions and comments about the changes and what they mean for people and their information. Based on this feedback, we have decided to return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.

Many of us at Facebook spent most of today discussing how best to move forward. One approach would have been to quickly amend the new terms with new language to clarify our positions further. Another approach was simply to revert to our old terms while we begin working on our next version. As we thought through this, we reached out to respected organizations to get their input....more Facebook Blog Responds