The Consumerist website noted that Facebook recently changed their Terms of Service (TOS) so that they now effectively own all of the content you post on their site. I verified this on their Terms page. I’ve copied the relevant section below.
You are solely responsible for the User Content that you Post on or through the Facebook Service. 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 (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof. You represent and warrant that you have all rights and permissions to grant the foregoing licenses.
While I’m not a lawyer, what I read in this is if you post content, like a song you’ve written and performed, on Facebook then you’ve relinquised your ownership rights and they are free to use it as they wish.
Sort of scary and maybe an argument for distributed social networking, something I’ve been thinking a lot about in the last few weeks.
