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The New Facebook Ads - Another Privacy Debacle?
privacyprof writes "Facebook recently announced a new advertising scheme called 'Social Ads.' Instead of using celebrities to hawk products, it will use pictures of Facebook users. Facebook might be entering into another privacy debacle. The site assumes that if people rate products highly or write good things about a product then they consent to being used in an advertisement for it. Facebook doesn't understand that privacy amounts to much more than keeping secrets — it involves controlling accessibility to personal data. 'The use of a person's name or image in an advertisement without that person's consent might constitute a violation of the appropriation of name or likeness tort. According to the Restatement (Second) of Torts 652C: "One who appropriates to his own use or benefit the name or likeness of another is subject to liability to the other for invasion of his privacy."'"
They have consent.
http://www.facebook.com/terms.php
My Babylon
Not quite. So, my friend Amy posts a picture of the two of us on Facebook as her profile picture. She has given Facebook a license to that photo. That's what the agreement stipulates. First, if Amy didn't take the photo, she might not own the rights to it and Facebook could be sued for copyright infringement. Yeah, they have that clause saying that you warrant that you have the rights to post it, but that simply won't hold up if they're sublicensing it. Sites can't be sued for what their users post, but then if they start sublicensing it in an intentional manner, it gets a lot more blurry. Second, and this one is a lot more air tight, the agreement does NOT include a clause granting endorsement rights. As the original post said, that is very different from copyright rights. Amy might own the copyright on many pictures of me. She does NOT have the right to license my image and likeness for the purposes of endorsement. She has the right to post the picture and even to give Facebook the right to use the image how they see fit as long as it isn't considered using the image/likeness as an advertisement or the like.
Give me a break. If you deactivate your account, all your information is deleted. You're complaining that if someone tags you in a photo, that tag still exists? Well, first, I'm not so sure that's true. It would be pretty sloppy engineering since the user account doesn't exist and so the link would go nowhere. And second, anyone can post anything about you anywhere, that doesn't make it someone else's responsibility.
Don't like what your friends are posting about you? Take it up with them!
More specifically (from your link)
"When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. 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."
I don't think you get what is going on here. It is not targeting ads to you. It is targeting ads to others using you as an unpaid spokesperson without your direct consent (or consent in the small print of the TOS). In the example on the facebook site, a person who liked the movie 'Top Gun' has their image being used to advertise Blockbuster. I'd be pretty pissed to find my face on a Blockbuster or Walmart ad just because I liked a product that one of these companies wants to sell. I think it is all pretty unseemly.