back to article Facebook does U-turn on eternal data grab

Facebook has dumped heavily criticised new service terms that lay claim to photos and messages posted to the site forever - even after accounts are deleted - following an outcry from members. CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote late on Tuesday that after discussions with "respected organizations", Facebook had decided to revert to the …

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  1. Adrian
    Paris Hilton

    Mark F^&(*kerburg morelike

    Since when do ISP's need a license to transmit my emails. Do the recieving organisations license my incoming emails ? No. Same goes for Farcebook. You do not need a license to transmit images/emails etc *if* the originator (normally the so-called 'license holder') asks for it to be distributed.

    It's just a rights grab which is appearing more and more often by failing companies desperate to make money.

    Paris - dumb f^*k

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    REVOLT!

    If only the Americans had been so pro-active with the President that wormed his way into the Whitehouse 9 years ago, and IMPEACHED the scum bag... If only us Brits would speak out more on matters of privacy and prevented this Government from bringing in tosh like National ID Cards! Britain is THE most surveilled country in the world bar none!

    Whilst it's refreshing to know that so many people had spoken out about this important issue, it's a pity some of the other REALLY important matters like those mentioned above are ignored completely!

  3. Vlad The Impugner

    I'm astounded

    [ ] Seen a 'Facebook is for saddo ppl' comment

    [ x ] surprised

    Although I bet the moderofascist* cunningly places this comment in after someone says that facebook is for saddo ppl ldo

    *or should that be moderafascist?

  4. W

    Front Page News!

    On The Metro, anyway, for what it's worth.

  5. Whitter
    Black Helicopters

    Bolted horse in a barn? No that's not quite right.. erm

    Does anyone seriously imagine that they changed the TOS and only then started thinking about selling it? They had a good few days to sell all the info and I'd be very surprised if they didn't have a few large-scale customers already lined up.

  6. John Macintyre

    just a quickie

    Not going to type it here since it's disgusting, but anyone who logs into facebook gets a message saying this at the top, and a link to a group setup by the main peeps called "Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities". Owners are:

    * Simon Axten (Stanford) (creator)

    * Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)

    * Barry Schnitt (Facebook)

    Scroll down to the discussion groups.... you'd think they'd be competent to make sure no racist shit ended up on this thing? What's the point of creating it if it's not going to be monitored in some way? Not going to help the situation.

    Personally I use facebook for 1 reason, there's people who are on there who I speak to but don't have email details for, and as such it's easier to get a bunch of people together. But it's no different to email, if I had address for most of them I'd stick to email. The rest is just convenient crap that I don't even look at. But it was a nice concept till all this theft of copyright crap turned up.

  7. Glenn Hunt

    It's all about the backups

    Like any organization, Facebook will be performing regular backups/snapshots/archiving. When you delete your account, do you expect that they are going to go immediately and find all copies of your data on all of those backups/etc to make sure it's really all gone? That would be an administrative nightmare. But currently under the the ToU, that is what they would have to do. I'm sure some lawyer somewhere is saying "We could get sued over this" and that is what is driving the new ToU. Have they done an awful job of explaining that, and was the language ham-fisted at best? Absolutely. But new ToU are coming. With 150 million accounts, why would they care if a few thousand deleted theirs?

  8. andy
    Thumb Down

    Blah blah blah.. a title

    What I don't understand is all these sites coming out with catch all, we own your content and can do with it whatever we want terms and then saying "we just use that so we can legally distribute it on the site".

    If that's what they mean why don't they just say that in the first place, might I suggest something like

    "By uploading your content you grant us permission to distribute on our website until such time as your account is deleted."

    If necessary they can also include a warning that content may still be held in backups/caches.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    @andy

    Because lawyers write the stuff, and when you ask a lawyer to do something, he'll do the absolute maximum he can. When we work on a cooperative agreement with another company, our lawyer writes a ludicrous document, their lawyer writes a ludicrous document, and thus we find out exactly where we stand. Better that than the lawyer missing something and your getting nailed for it unexpectedly.

    My instinct is to jump all over Facebook like everyone else, but on the other hand, why would they even WANT everyone's photos? What the hell are they going to do with them, start a gallery? Sell rights for some picture of three buddies in a bar last October? Troll through a million accounts to find eight worthwhile songs and put together a compilation album?

    It might be a shitty agreement, but I fail to see how they could make money filching the stuff people post to their site.

  10. david miron

    Zuckerberg Unbound

    Here's my cartoon take on Facebook's behavior

    http://www.pcdisorder.com/2009/02/facebooks-zuckerberg-unbound.html

  11. Ken Hagan Gold badge

    Re: It's all about the backups

    No, it can't be that. Facebook is a US operation and they have a "fair use" defence (er, defense) which would certainly cover backups, as long as the company *didn't* trawl the backup files looking for material to pilfer. It's an IP land-grab, like Google's last year, and reversed at roughly the same speed.

    I think the real problem is that these companies haven't really decided whether they are publishers or carriers. They want to be carriers when it looks like they might get sued for the stuff they've carried, and they want to be publishers when it looks like there might be some money to cream off what they've carried. To be honest, I hope one of these land-grabs succeeds in the near future, and the company responsible is *then* sued shitless for something they've "acquired" that way. Not only would the justice be poetic, it would also clarify what has (inexplicably, IMO) been a grey area.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Insert life here...

    [ x ] Facebook is for saddo ppl' comment

    [ ] Surprised

  13. Matthew Collier
    Alert

    I have to say...

    ...the naivety displayed in this BBC discussion thread really does astound me!

    http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=1&forumID=6079&start=30&tstart=0&edition=1&ttl=20090219151627#paginator

    Matt.

  14. Disco-Legend-Zeke
    Paris Hilton

    YAHOO! owns! your! content! forever!

    This latest by facebook was probably an attempt to get up to speed with YAHOO! who states in their terms of service that you grant them a license forever to use your created content.

    Yahoo also protects itself from medical liability in this interesting verbiage (capslock by yahoo):

    IF YOU, OR ANYONE IN YOUR FAMILY, HAVE AN EPILEPTIC CONDITION, CONSULT YOUR PHYSICIAN PRIOR TO USING THE YAHOO! SERVICE. IMMEDIATELY DISCONTINUE USE OF THE YAHOO! SERVICES AND CONSULT YOUR PHYSICIAN IF YOU EXPERIENCE ANY OF THE FOLLOWING SYMPTOMS WHILE USING THE YAHOO! SERVICE: DIZZINESS, ALTERED VISION, EYE OR MUSCLE TWITCHES, LOSS OF AWARENESS, DISORIENTATION, ANY INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENT, OR CONVULSIONS.

    no i didn't make this up!

    paris cause she makes me dizzy.

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