For quite some time now, there has been considerable debate about the “terms of use” for Facebook users. What’s the issue? Facebook claims that whatever your write is theirs.
You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute any User Content you post.
The reasons for protests ranged from how could Facebook claim to be free when in fact it retains the right to your material? Also, what about your stuff when you deleted your account?
So, Mark Zuckerberg hosted a press conference where he revealed that Facebook always wanted to make its processes transparent and that should apply to the terms of use as well. In a blog post that followed on the facebook blog he said
“Our main goal at Facebook is to help make the world more open and transparent. We believe that if we want to lead the world in this direction, then we must set an example by running our service in this way.”
So what happens now?
Facebook recently released two documents, The Facebook principles and the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.
The first document will serve as the guiding framework behind any policy in the future and defines the rights of the FB users where as the second document will replace the terms of use.
The Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (formerly the “Terms of Service”), now clearly states that Facebook does not claim ownership of user content, although the act of using Facebook does grant the company non-exclusive rights to do what it wants with the content. However, you can end that agreement by deleting items or leaving Facebook: “This license ends when you delete your content or your account,” the Statement says.
Zuckerberg is urging users to join the two groups and give feedback on how to improve these two initiatives of FB. He is also saying that he wants to make the terms of use easily comprehendible so that there is no ambiguity of any sorts since terms of usage are generally known to contain language that is quite formal. People will be urged to vote on the topics beto gauge their response to the new guidelines.
