It's Web 2.0--do you know where your rights are?

This from Paul Melcher's great blog on the stock photo industry, pointing to a Facebook rights grab. Here is the language in the Facebook Terms of Use:

"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, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, 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."

It seems some news organizations have been sweeping Facebook for content, claiming "Fair Use," which is what brought this to the fore. It appears that by posting anything on the site, you've given away the right to reproduce your work anywhere, by anyone, for no compensation, and you can't do a thing about it.

Comments

[Martin Doonan]

Although you still own the IP:
"Facebook does not assert any ownership over your User Content; rather, as between us and you, subject to the rights granted to us in these Terms, you retain full ownership of all of your User Content and any intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights associated with your User Content."
I think I'd need a lawyer just to sort that lot out.
The other worrying thing is the sweeping definition of "User Content": pretty much anything you post up that others can see, they can use in any way they like.

[Doug Plummer]

That you still "own" the copyright is meaningless when they've already granted themselves all rights to your work, even the right to sublicense. Overall it's an offensive set of terms.

[romanlily]

Stuff like this is further encouragement for me to just give up on Facebook altogether. (Or at least quietly remove all my photos from the site. Which I just did.)

[Jim Roelofs]

Doug, spot on. These sites are to be avoided, like the black plague.

[bowerbird]

romanlily said:
> Or at least quietly remove all my photos
> from the site. Which I just did.

doesn't matter. once you uploaded them,
you gave over full rights. _in_perpetuity._
you can be sure facebook backs up its files,
so the fact that you've now "removed" them
makes absolutely no difference in the world.

for what it's worth, myspace has the same terms.

i don't see why any creative individual would
submit _anything_ to these sites, to be honest.

-bowerbird

[Justin Weiss]

What if you post photos in SmugMug and then use a Facebook app like SmugFoto to enable them to be viewed on Facebook? Technically, you're not posting the photos on Facebook because they are on the SmugMug server.

Also, these kinds of one-sided corporate contracts that no one ever reads (known as "contracts of adhesion") often fail to hold up in court. But you'd have to hire a lawyer and sue to challenge the Facebook contract, which would be a time-consuming and expensive ordeal.