Tag Archives | Terms of service

Consumerist (Pot) Meet Facebook (Kettle)

Before I consider this Facebook issue closed, I want to bring you a couple late breaking items.

First, one of my blogger friends, Patrick Neeman, on his blog UsabilityCounts, makes what to me is an incredible discovery. He takes a closer look at the Consumerist’s Terms of Service agreement. The Consumerist, if you remember, was one of the sites expressing the most outrage over this whole flap. I don’t want to give his nice post away, but let’s just say it turns out that the Consumerist owns all your stuff, too.

Second, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gave what I consider a reasonable and accurate statement in regards to Facebook’s position in the whole fiasco.

Call me an apologist if you must, but the bottom line here is that this has all been a good lesson for you the internet user. If you are worried about what becomes of what you post on the internet, you need to be more proactive about where you post it, and read, ok, at least skim, those terms of service agreements, because, the legal merits of them aside, you must assume you are bound by them by using the software. Whether you agree with them or not.

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4 Reasons Why You Should Not Freak Out About the Facebook Terms of Service Changes

Wow, a lot of people are all hot and bothered about this Facebook issue. If you have not been paying attention, Facebook recently changed their Terms of Service to say, in a nutshell, that they own whatever content you put up on their servers now and forever, even if you cancel your account.

Calm down people, this was a PR blunder for Facebook, but at the end of the day, I don’t think you have all that much to worry about, and I will tell you why. And after I do, you can use the comments to call me naive, a neopyhte, or whatever else you want, but I think you will agree with me at least in part, that:

Your content, while special to you, is not that special.
If you aren’t selling your content, what makes you think anyone will buy it from Facebook either?
If you are selling your content, why are you also uploading it to Facebook?
Facebook, and by Facebook I mean it’s owners, have a gigantic payday in their future, do you really think that they want to kill their brand by becoming known as content thieves?

Facebook is taking the heat at the moment, but have you ever thought about who owns all the data you have been pumping onto servers all over the internet? Have you read any of the countless Terms of Service agreements you have agreed to? No, I am guessing most of you never thought about any of this until now. Now all of a sudden, you are starting to wonder, who owns your Google Docs, your Youtube videos, your Tweets, even your email and maybe your blog, for pete’s sake? I don’t really know for sure who owns it all either, but I am guessing you are not the only one who would make a claim to your data.

What I am saying, whether you agree or not, is that whoever owns it, this is your data. It’s meaningful to you, but it’s just digital stuff, and really, other than it’s primary purpose of being a means to bring you back to their infrastructure, to see their ads and use their product, your data does not hold much value for the providers like Facebook. If that approach makes you uncomfortable, don’t put your data on a server you don’t own.

Go see Chris Brogan for a very good take on all this as well.