Facebook: We own your stuff. Forever!!! Mwoehahaha!!!! (Updated)

Facebook did it!

They managed to, again, reach the top of the headlines on many news-websites, especially the techie kind of websites.

What did they do? You most probably have already heard about it. Facebook made some small changes in their Terms Of Service, which have a huge impact on you, as the user.

Basically, the changes they made allow them to use ALL the content that you upload onto your profile, in ANY WAY they want (altering, deleting, selling, …), and this FOREVER. Even when you quit your Facebook account!

This means, if you are a copywriter, and wrote some articles which you uploaded to Facebook, they are theirs now. Same goes if you are a musician, or a 3D artist, or a photographer, or anything… Facebook has, and keeps, the right to use your work, to change it as they want, to sell it. This is an incredible breach into many rights of artists and users.

Do you want to read more about this new TOS of Facebook, and it’s implications? Then I suggest you read this exellent article by Stan Schroeder:

http://mashable.com/2009/02/16/facebook-tos-privacy/

UPDATE: around the time of writing this article, The New York Times published an article about this statement on the FaceBook homepage today:

“Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.”

It seems that FaceBook users and their content are safe again. For now…

The article in The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/technology/internet/19facebook.html?_r=2&partner=rss