Robin Yap, a very wise friend of mine commented on Facebook today, and it seems that we have to be more careful about the sites we sign up for. If you don’t read it, you could be giving away all your content.

Here is a piece from his post:

From the initial discussion on a Facebook thread with Liz Strauss, I decided to investigate other network ToS’. First stop, Facebook (text in bold are for your reference).

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 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.

Read all of Robin’s post to understand how problematic this could all be.

Originally posted on August 9, 2007 @ 12:49 am