![\"user-pic\"](\"/css/images/default.gif\")
@philmin:
Here's an example. You're a photographer. You post your work on Facebook. Facebook decides to publish \"Photos from Facebook\" and they take a bunch of your photos and put them in this book. This book sells a million copies. You don't see one red cent while FB makes millions.
Kinda scummy how they profit from your work, no?
What if they decided to make a \"Douchebags of Facebook\" book and used a few of your posts and other information you make available on the site? Your previously private-only content is now being sold to millions of people, some of which I'm sure will be 4chaners who'll get an instant erection harassing you. Once again, FB makes you look like an asshole and profits from it.
Yes yes, I know \"if it is on the Internet you should assume everyone knows about it\", but there is a world of difference between the few dozen people that may stumble upon your profile and FB highlighting it for the world to see.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-25946-100x100.png\")
@chris_l: Don't forget they can sublicense so they can sell those rights to a publisher to mine and use photos or other creative works from the site!
And you would never see a dime!
@chris_l:
I'm glad you brought this up. I'm a former war correspondent and photographer and I've uploaded a ton of my portfolio onto facebook. Now I might be taking it down.
@wgrune: @1stMarDiv: Read the FB's TOS closely: your images are already archived in their databases. Even if you remove your photos from your account, your photos are still archived anyway and FB already owned the right to them. If you delete your account with all of your contents removed, FB still have them anyway. We got screwed by insidious, greedy lawyers hired by Facebook.
@chris_l: Perhaps kinda scummy, but are you getting clients because Facebook let you connect with them? Where's Facebook's cut in all the services they provide to you?
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-343837-100x100.png\")
@chris_l:
If they did make \"Douchebags of Facebook\" that would be a very, very thick book. Think of just how many frat boys with stunner shades and popped collars there are on facebook! Oh, the humanity!
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-1529-100x100.png\")
@chris_l: Many of my friends are writers and immediately took down any unpublished writing they had on Facebook. It might seem excessive and paranoid (heh, they are writers), but I suppose it's always better to be safe than sorry. The sad thing is, in this way, the new TOS ruins the networking value Facebook had previously. Artists could potentially distribute and critique their own and others art - not anymore.
Myspace declined, at least for me, because it became a mess of spam and horribly excessive customization. Facebook is taking the opposite route. It's rapidly decreasing its own value through restriction of its services to a program that hosts navel-gazing status messages and a few time-wasting games. Such a big, feature rich site has shockingly little payoff. Odd how that works.
@chris_l:
Interesting. It seems if they did things like that, they would be treating their TOS similar to some sort of a legal contract, and hopefully that would never hold up in court if they tried it.
I cant believe these bad TOS are worth all the negative publicity.
@philmin: Except the TOS also binds you to mandatory arbitration, so the court deal is moot and you get screwed anyway. Hooray!
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-439678-100x100.png\")
@Ubik2501: I have a feeling if anything did come of a dispute between facebook and someone, that mandatory arbitration clause would be found almost immediately unconscionable
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-693892-100x100.png\")
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-117249-100x100.png\")
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-113647-100x100.png\")
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-196502-100x100.png\")
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-52204-100x100.png\")
Out of curiousity, what problems are being caused by Facebooks ownership claims?
@philmin: People think their vacation/party photos are worth something. Not really a story here.
Any professional artist (and by that, I mean people who make their living with their craft) who puts their work up on the internet for all to see is asking people to take their images and store them away. Because that's exactly what happens when people view the page: that artwork gets saved in the user's cache, on their machine.
I remember way back when the web first started. All sorts of people wanted to know how to make it so that people could view an image but not save it. And it can't be done. Sorry.
If you don't want people to have your artwork, don't put it on the net. Plain and simple. And if you really think that those pictures you took with your point-and-shoot in Yosemite are worth something, please come back down to earth and join the rest of us rational people.
@philmin: Nothing... yet. It's the perpetual license claim that is causing issues. As a Graphic Designer I take issue with the fact that they can take any of my images and use them with no recompense to me. Zuckerberg said they wouldn't use the info in anyway we wouldn't want. Fine, put that in writing.
On a side note, that facebook group has almost tripled in size since last night. Last I checked it was at 10k, now it's just shy of 30k.