From www.taylor.edu - Taylor University, integrating faith and learning

Facebook Forever?

02.17.2009

     Recently, it has come to light that Facebook changed it's Terms of Service (TOS) concerning their rights to the User Content placed on their service.

     According to the original blog post on "The Consumerist" that generated much of the hoopla around this issue, part of Facebook's TOS has previously read as follows:

         "You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof."

They have added the following lines:

          "You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content."

To read more about this isuue, take a look at the following links:

"Facebook's New Terms Of Service: 'We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever.'" - The Consumerist

"Facebook Membership May Be Forever" - FoxNews.com

"Facebook faces furor over content rights" - CNN.com

 

Shawn Denny, Information Services Librarian