Facebook Membership May Be Forever

[mercurial]

Once a Facebook member, always a member.

The Consumerist blog noticed Sunday that the social-networking giant had quietly made a change to its user Terms of Service (TOS) on Feb. 4.

Facebook now declares that it has a perpetual license to use anything you post to your own Facebook page — even if you terminate your account.

Here's the licensing part of the legalese, which sounds bad enough:

"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."

In other words, while it doesn't actually own your photos, scribblings and status updates — you do — Facebook can do whatever it wants with it, whenever it wants, in order to promote itself or create or sell ads.

Theoretically, it can even "license" a picture of your kids for use in a third party's ad campaign.

Most of that has been part of the Facebook Terms of Service for a while. After all, without user-generated content, Facebook would be nothing.

What's been removed is this: "If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however (sic) you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content."

And what's been added is this: "The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook Service" — after which follows a list of most of the sections on the Terms of Service page.

More...

 

[MielieSpoor]

How do one go about deleting one's profile? That is not the terms I agreed to when signing up and I don't agree to that so I want to delete my account!

 

[Keeper]

you actually read it?

 

[medicnick83]

Ag, I couldn't care less - I don't generally upload anything important to FB now anymore - everything goes on Flickr

 

[The_Unbeliever]

Disabled my account a long while ago.

You can't delete your personal details and other stuff tho - best to do is to mess them up completely before you "shutdown"....

 

[genetic]

I deleted my facecrook account a while ago as well. Glad I did.

 

[Knave]

I deleted my facecrook account a while ago as well. Glad I did.

No you didn't. You just disabled it.

Facebook accounts cannot be "deleted" AFAIK.

 

[Jewelbox]

Not much of me on facebook to worry about!

 

[blunomore]

What did you guys post on FB that got you so worried?

 

[Guest 20221009]

Sure can delete your account..not only deactivate it.

http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account

I am also appalled by the latest developments, hence mine is going down in two days time. I signed up under the old ToS. Besides I hardly visit the site theses days, I can go for 3 weeks without a single loggon..

 

[bwana]

I slap a massive watermark on all the images I upload to facebook so at least I'll get some free advertising if they decide to hijack any of my stuff

 

[JK8]

FBI!!

 

[Picard]

They can do whatever the hell they want with the 5 pics I've uploaded so far.

 

[blunomore]

FBI!!

Kindly elaborate.

 

[LazyLion]

Here's a tip... never put anything on the internet, anywhere... that you don't want distributed, looked at, mocked, photoshopped, trampled upon, etc.

Let the user beware.

 

[Guest 20221009]

Phew! just killed my account and they told me that its been deactivated and will be deleted in the next 14 days provided I do not log in between now and day 14.

If they still got my stuff by the 14th day..I m gonna do an Erin Brockovichon them...

Twitter gone, Facebook gone, Hi-5..next up is MySpace..am really proud of me

 

[Knave]

Sure can delete your account..not only deactivate it.

My mistake!

 

[Balstrome]

Here's a tip... never put anything on the internet, anywhere... that you don't want distributed, looked at, mocked, photoshopped, trampled upon, etc.

Let the user beware.

Cause the user WILL be 'shopped.

 

[HypoThesis]

Facebook have 'heard the voice of reason'

If you log on you're greeted by this now:

Terms of Use Update

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.

 

[krycor]

yup. u just have to make sure u use the privacy tools right(so other people don't mess peoples photo's as someone claimed) and stuff.. I dunno i don't really care, i use it as a tool.