The debate around privacy and ownership of online content has been raging for a while now. Information spreads easily online and is accessible to all for use and distribution. The last two days have seen some interesting and significant attempts at laying down regulations that should determine and affect the way we view ownership of content online.
Facebook Owns You
Firstly, Facebook has changed its terms of service. The main result of this - deleting your profile does not terminate your agreement with Facebook. Facebook has granted itself indefinite rights to the content you post on the site. As Paul Jacobson has pointed out, what is particularly worrying here is the definition of the term "post":
"What alarms me the most is that Facebook takes a license to the content you may only link to on Facebook and don't upload to the service. This covers photos you may have stored on Flickr, videos on Zoopy or Vimeo and more."
Zuckerberg's response to concerns has completely avoided this topic, he chose rather to focus on the idea that content you've uploaded or shared with other users belongs to them as well, so you can't delete it.
The licence change has huge implications for business, as the Facebook licence supersedes their own content licensing on the site. It’s certainly made me think twice about recommending services like Facebook Connect…
An Accusation in New Zealand Will Shut You Down
In other news, and a bit closer to home, Suzan informed me that there is a huge movement happening in New Zealand at the moment. A law called the "Guilt upon Accusation Law" is being enforced in the country from the 28th of February. Basically, if you've been accused of infringing on copyright, your Internet access can be shut down "without any evidence held up to court scrutiny" (which suggests some interesting implictions for Facebook).
Many are outraged and have started a movement called Internet Blackout. You can read more about it here, but quoting the site:
“However, with the digitisation of media the lines between use and copy have become blurred. Laws regulating the act of copying have failed to keep pace with technology and soon ISPs will be forced to take down internet connections and websites of anyone accused (not convicted) of copyright infringement. Copyright law is now having the effect of limiting artists, restricting businesses, and harming public rights.”
The copyright issue is a tricky one. We discovered that an organisation we affectionately like to call “the weasels” was selling downloads of our free textbook last week. We certainly wanted our rights protected in that regard and the requirements of our CC licence met.
This said, an accusation resulting in a shut down should be carefully considered; it can have HUGE implications for a business or any website (I’m imagining our Ministry of Cunning Plans squirming at the news). Innocent sites would sustain serious damage for no reason.
While these two events represent quite different situations, they are both evidence that the ownership issue is stepping out of the debate arena and into a space where licenses and laws are evolving and being enforced.
Being a great believer in the power of crowds, I’m curious to see if people will “vote with their feet” in order to make the licenses and laws suit them. If businesses can be trusted to act in their own interests and governments can be trusted to misunderstand the workings of the online environment - can users be trusted to use the collective organising power or the Internet to its full force?
Update: If you log onto Facebook you'll see the following message:
Terms of Use Update: Over the past few days, we have received a lot of good feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.
Facebook is certainly listening, I'm curious to see what the next version of the licence will look like.
Update 2 (18/02) 9:51am: It seems that not just user feedback, but also a federal complaint led to Facebook's decision to revert to their old terms of service. You can read more about that here and here.
Update 3 (20/02) : Oh the plot thickens! Facebook have included a special notice on the page that displays when people try to delete their accounts, pointing out that they have reverted to their old terms of service. I wonder how many people deleted their accounts before they did this.. (via AltafSayani)
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Muti
Very interesting stuff! In my opinion I think this may be the beginning of the general public becoming aware of the need for data portability (or rather, that's certainly my hope). While this on its own isn't enough to chase me off Facebook I would certainly jump at a service which grants me 100% control and ownership over my content (including the ability to bulk download it etc).
Let's hope Facebook learn the lesson "Your consumers own you" before its to late.
Tim
@timshier
Posted by Tim Shier on 2009/02/17