Facebook, ToS, recap

[laurion]

If you haven’t already heard, Facebook just changed its Terms of Service, and not in your favor. To recap and review:

• CNet discusses the changes made
• Amanda French compares ToS from several major sites, and finds FB to be overreaching
• Digital Natives agrees, but also points out that it won’t make a lot of difference

My reaction: I sure hope FB changes its mind and comes more back in line with common practice.  These days no one reads the ToS any more than they read the EULA, and although legally millions of people have just given up ownership rights, they don’t know it, probably won’t know it, and will probably be very peeved when (if, I suppose)  FB starts doing things with their info.  I’m not sure why FB went this far with the ToS, but it has to either be for legal protection or for further data mining and potential new streams of revenue.

Originally published at lebor.net. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[roguesylph.livejournal.com]

I wonder if there's a difference between photos that one uploads directly to Facebook that are also hosted on Flickr, and photos that are streamed to facebook using the Flickr apps. If I understand correctly, the stuff being streamed through my Flickr app doesn't actually live on the the Facebook servers, so is it safe from their ToS?

[laurion]

I don't know. It might depend on how FB handles things. If they're making a copy and hosting it themselves (as I would imagine they must, rather than rely on Flickr to be up and not changing things), then the images might be subject to the ToS. I don't have FB and flickr hooked up, so I never read the fine print issued when you connect the two services.