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.
Yes Facebook can SELL little Susie's beach picture to Playboy for their Facebook Hotties edition. Yesterday, an astute follower of my burgeoning Facebook site pointed out to me that I have freely given Facebook the absolute irrevocable right to SELL anything I post to ANYONE ANYWHERE in the world. (This person is not a lawyer, mind you, and they say lawyers ruin everything). Not only can Facebook sell my content, they can SUBLICENSE it to anyone anytime without any further consent on my part or on the part of the person portrayed in whatever it is that I have posted.
So gentle Facebook readers, fans, posters, devotees, tell everyone you know that anything you post on Facebook now BELONGS TO FACEBOOK. They can sell it. They can license it to others.
Those cute baby pictures - GAP KIDS. Your one of a kind video documentary on the Bush White House - CNN. Your son or daughter's half-naked drunken orgy - HARVARD ADMISSIONS. Those pictures of you skinny dipping at camp in 1972 . . . . okay okay I know, well who would want those? Perhaps the AARP NEWSLETTER.
You and your children are hereby warned. Tell everyone you know: Facebook is THE MAN. They are George Orwell's 1984 and the Bush Administration ALL IN ONE. They want your children. They want you. Content content content is king. It all belongs to Facebook. And you just gave it to them for FREE!!!
Hi James,
ReplyDeleteMay I forward this information about Facebook widely to my lists just as it appears above?
Pam
Pam (and others), everything on Childlaw is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/) which basically means that you are free to SHARE — to copy, distribute, and display this entry and to REMIX — to make derivative works, as long as you ATTRIBUTE the work to the Childlaw blog. The best way to do this is to quote all or part of this entry and include a link to it.
ReplyDeleteThe FaceBook self-declared right to market and disseminate all posted items is not much assuaged by Desiree's apologia. The fact that withdrawal of the posting terminates future marketing/dispensation is hardly much help once the first level of that dissemination has occurred. It is now in third party hands. And is Facebook going to retract rights to items already disseminated? How? Nor is the balm of optimism and faith she urges of much solace either. We rely on what... the discretion of the corporate interests running Facebook? Including future ownership and management? It seems to me that James has raised a serious issue concerning privacy rights of our children. They do not communicate to Facebook with the reasonable expectation that their submissions are subject to such use and marketing. This self-proclaimed license is a bold declaration of intellectual property expropriation license. It warrants serious thought. The warning is prudently sounded. Bob Fellmeth
ReplyDeleteHi All.
ReplyDeleteWell well well...mum is going to be mighty upset when she finds little Jhonnys mags under the bed only to find big sisters face superimposed on the latest filth with legs astride....