I guess I'll never use Facebook

[pecunium]

For all I've seen/heard, Facebook has moved from interesting, to sort of more trouble than it's worth.

Well, it turns out it's worse than trouble... it's run by a bunch of thieves.

Turns out the ToS gives them absolute rights, now, and in perpetuity to any images which ever so much as rest for a moment on one of their servers.

Rights grabs aren't new. Anytime I consider entering a contest I read the rules; because a lot of them make some fairly demands for usage rights. National Geographic makes a complete claim to use your work, make derivative use of it, in perpetuity, an in any medium now, or yet to be. So no National Geographic contests for me. Yes, I get to keep my copyright, but they get it too, and they get to use it forever, and not a penny to me; barring the longish shot (just based on numbers) that I win.

And if I win, you can bet they'll use it.

Back to Facebook.

When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. 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. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content. 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.

It gets better. If you use an RSS feed to post to Facebook... it gets hosted on the Facebook servers. Facebook reads the feed, and then duplicates the source material on it's servers.

Comments

[shunra.livejournal.com]

Yup, that's a bunch of thieves, all right.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

I;ve seen this stuff before, and I can sort of see where they're coming from. In a world of the RIAA and sometimes pretty silly copyright litigation, I'm not really surprised that another net-service is doing this stuff.

Look at the second block you highlight. They say that when you remove your User Content, the license expires, but they can retain archived copies. In other words, they don't want the hassle of removing data from backups. I'm not sure that I'd trust a backup system which had to do that.

And it's the internet. The company could be taken over by another, The servers could be anywhere. The people looking at User Content could be anywhere. Even the "Derivative Works" clause might have started from the possibility of site design and image re-scaling.

I can certainly see this starting out on the basis of good legal advice to achieve an honest object. But the end result stinks.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Look at the first part.... They have perpetual rights, and they get to keep copies. Derivative works is a term of art (it's part of Fair Use, actually, and is a defense against infringement).

That block is a flat out claim that by hosting something on their servers, they have the same right of use that you do. Full Stop.

And they reserve the right to keep your stuff, and still use it; because the first grant wasn't limited to the time it rests on the servers. If they were just talking back-ups they could limit the claim in the first bit.
But they didn't. If they find something they like when checking a back-up, they get to use it.

To reach for a military analogy... one does not plan for what the enemy will do, but for what they can do.

And the thing is, they don't need to make these claims. They do it because it's easier to pull this sort of shit, and then be able to steal something, than to negotiate with people who have images they want to use. But they don't.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

Yep, it's the apparent clash between saying it's an "irrevocable, perpetual," license' and saying the license automatically expires if the user content is removed.

What sort of legally-trained idiot wrote that?

[roman-mclaze.livejournal.com]

Well that's the end of MY Facebook account then.

[fantasyecho.livejournal.com]

Another reason why I'm still not on Facebook. And people just don't get this, you know.

NG, at least that's a solid institution in which you can build a good reputation, and they're not barring you from using the images for yourself. It's like free advertisement for your work, if they use it, in a good magazine that's known for quality.

But losing work to something like Facebook? Fuck that noise.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Facebook isn't barring you from using them either. The rights grab is, for both of them, about the same.

I'd just expect NG (and a lot of other contests) to be a little less brazen in what they take from the photographer. A good stock useage fee for NG is on the order of 5-10 thousand dollars for a full page, and at least 500 for lesser sizes.

So, in exchange for the chance at winning, they are, "buying" tens of thousands of dollars (perhaps millions) of photographs. Most won't ever be so used, but that still irks me.

[cbpotts.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this. May I link here? I've many photographers on my flist who might benefit from this knowledge.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Feel free. Any open post is fair game for linking.

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

They could at least use a gun. Sheesh.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

My resolve to avoid Facebook has been strengthened. Jeez.

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

*triple-checks that she has no Facebook account*

[b0dice-g0ddess.livejournal.com]

I'm soooo glad I didn't cave to the "Facebook" craze.