Facebook's new terms of service agreement ends with a new section as to how they will be dealing with your information and content. It reads...
You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof."
Facebook now reserves the right to use your pictures, information and pretty much anything else you put up on their website for anything they want because they own the rights to everyones content.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, released this statement shortly after on the Facebook blog...
Still, the interesting thing about this change in our terms is that it highlights the importance of these issues and their complexity. People want full ownership and control of their information so they can turn off access to it at any time. At the same time, people also want to be able to bring the information others have shared with them-like email addresses, phone numbers, photos and so on-to other services and grant those services access to those people's information. These two positions are at odds with eachother. There is no system today that enables me to share my email address with you and then simultaneously lets me control who you share it with and also lets you control what services you share it with.
Basically what Mark is trying to get across is that they just want to cover their asses if there is ever any discretion with the content on their site and the law.
Since the launch of the new TOS there has been an uprising on, ironically, Facebook with a slew of groups railing Facebook for their "betrayal," some with already more than 3,000 members.
Facebook's PR department really needs to get a handle on the situation or they risk losing current and future members.
