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Facebook's New Terms of Service

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the are-we-really-worried-about-this dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Chris Walters writes about Facebook's new terms of service. 'Facebook's terms of service (TOS) used to say that when you closed an account on their network, any rights they claimed to the original content you uploaded would expire. Not anymore. 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.'" Oh no! Now they'll be able to license your super flair goblin poke 25 tag history!

7 of 426 comments (clear)

  1. Current users? by carlvlad · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How will they get agreement from current users? Does the TOS pops out the next time they login during the implementation?

    1. Re:Current users? by Aladrin · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yes, but if you discontinue use and disagree with the current terms, can you get them to delete you like they would under the old ones?

      --
      "If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
    2. Re:Current users? by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'm a little sketchy on this one, can they actually do this? I mean, the users signed up under the expectation that copyright law would be honored. I don't think that they actually have a legal leg to stand on here. You can change the TOS so that new material uploaded will be owned by Facebook, but changing the TOS and expecting that to change the copyright on a lot of media retroactively? I only pray that this is what kills facebook so I can stop hearing people rant about how great it is and how I should join.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:Current users? by French+Mailman · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You will have to log in first in order to delete your account. So either log in now, which constitutes use of Facebook after the TOS have been published, and FB will keep the content you're about to delete, or never log in again and leave your content online for FB to do whatever it wants with it.

      Facebook: helping you give away your privacy since 2003!

  2. Data Protection Act by SimonTheSoundMan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    IANAL, but could someone, even if YANAL, please tell where this would come in under the UK's Data Protection Act?

    Surely they can't keep such information if you want it to be removed.

  3. Re:Naive thinking... by carlvlad · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I recall some time back on /. , when another social networking site (which I can't recall the name) did something like this. A fellow slashdoter comes up with an interesting approach by slowly replacing the contents with false data instead of deleting the account. I think that would work well providing the site does not maintain old archives.

  4. Here's an even more devious possibility. by a+whoabot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Some pornography company sublicenses photos of one million girls in bikinis and their contact info from Facebook. They then send something like the following letter to the girls:

    "Recently, for inclusion in our published material, we purchased the rights to the enclosed photo you licensed to Facebook. We were concerned that you may not want to be included, so we are giving you the chance to opt-out. We need only a payment of $50 to cover the amount we paid Facebook and administrative costs. If you do not want to pay and wished to be included in our published material, you will be featured in our "Skanky Bikini Amateurs" collection on our website. Thank you."