Facebook and Copyright of user content
Posted by: Abdulrahman Rafiq on behalf of Faraz Shah (Photographer)
Sitting with several Calfriends, sipping cups cold coffee (Pakistani Style) at Mirchi Cafe in Fremont, California I was astounded to learn about Facebooks content copyright policy.
Believe it or not, any content, primarily photos and videos that a user posts to Facebook is solely own by Facebook.com.
Even if you delete the content from your profile, it will not be deleted from Facebooks database, and they reserve the right to use any content for marketing and publicity purposes.
See Facebook’s Terms of Use:
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.
To learn more about this visit http://PhotoAttorney.com
Moral of the story is: Before posting content to any Social Network make sure you have read the Terms of Use statement. You may be in for a surprise.
(Posting from Blackberry)
Thank you for the warning/ reminder on facebook owning the rights to all photos uploaded to the site. In my personal opinion, it is essential to remember that putting anything online, even if marked “private”, is basically published publicly worldwide and can have some very unforseen consequences.