Facebook “Terms of Use” Quick Update
I just wanted to give folks a quick update on yesterday’s post regarding Facebooks Terms of Use policy.
Several people had asked if this issue could be bypassed by including an RSS feed from your images hosted on Flickr.com or by using one Facebooks API software hacks to link to an external photo gallery on flickr, picassa or other online photo galleries?
While both of these solutions are easy to do, neither of them provide you protection from Facebook using your images for whatever they deem appropriate.
I posed this very question to legal expert Caroline E. Wright www.photoattorney.com and she responded with the following.
However, you’re still “posting” content on the site, which is included in the Facebook license - “By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant . . . to the Company.”
So in a nutshell until Facebook changes their Terms of Use, you are in no way protected from them using your content.
It was also brought to my attention there has been a Facebook group started which now stands at over 42k people protesting this very practice. Please join and hopefully together we can get Facebook to change the way they are doing business.
Manbou:
I asked about this issue on your earlier post and just saw this newer post now.
It seems Ms. Wright is assuming that using an RSS feed/ API to display photos on Facebook is the same thing as “posting” photos on Facebook.
I am curious whether Ms. Wright can cite any legal precedent or other authority for this proposition. Unless the of “posting” has already been resolved through well-established case law or some sort of statute, I believe it would be, at the very least, an open question to be decided in court (and moreover, my personal opinion is that Facebook would lose such a court case).
My own view is that a photo is not “posted” on Facebook if it has not been uploaded to Facebook’s servers. In the case of RSS feeds or API’s, Facebook is just showing you content that has been posted elsewhere.
Posted on January 30th, 2009 at 12:16 am
Manbou:
Oops: “Unless the of ‘posting’” should be, “Unless the definition of ‘posting’”…
Posted on January 30th, 2009 at 12:22 am