Facebook Reverts Back To Old Terms Of Service
It appears in the wake of global attention and outcry, Facebook has, as of at least 12:27 am, reverted back to the previous Terms of Service. Phew, now we can all go back to sending each other digital cupcakes without Big Brother watching us. This is a temporary move until Facebook can draft a new Terms of Service that addresses the users' concerns. CEO Zuckerberg wrote a new blog post, and Facebook spokesperson Barry Schnitt released this statement:
Hi everyone,
First, I want to apologize for the delay in response. It's been a long day with lots of interesting and constructive discussions. Second, I want to thank you for your questions and concerns. As Mark expressed in his blog post on Monday, it was never our intention to confuse people or make them uneasy about sharing on Facebook. I also want to be very clear that Facebook does not, nor have we ever, claimed ownership over people's content. Your content belongs to you.
We do need certain licenses in order to facilitate the sharing of your content through our service. That's where the Terms of Use come in. The fact that you've raised the questions you have is proof that we haven't done a good job explaining these licenses in the actual language of the document. In fact, as we were working to answer your questions, we realized the new version of the Terms might technically permit some of the hypothetical situations people have offered. I can assure you, however, that these hypotheticals aren't ones we had in mind when writing the Terms, and that selling user information for profit or using it to advertise Facebook in some way was never part of our original intent. Assurances aren't enough, though, and we plan to codify this in our revised Terms through simple language that defines Facebook's rights much more specifically.
In the meantime, we've decided to revert to the old Terms as we work to address this. Mark has explained this in more detail in another blog post (http://blog.facebook.com), and we've created a group where people can provide input (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=69048030774). We hope you'll join this group and post comments. We promise to use these comments to help construct a new Terms of Use that reflects the principles around how people share and control their information, and that's written clearly in language everyone can understand.
I hope you don't think your participation in this discussion was a waste of time. Honestly, your questions were very helpful to us in arriving at what we believe is the right decision. Also, I think your questions will continue to be useful as we're crafting a new Terms.
Again, thanks for the fruitful discussion and a special thanks to Anne Katherine and Julius for setting up this feedback forum. We hope you'll all join our "Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" ( http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=69048030774 ) group and continue discussing these issues there.
CEO Zuckerberg's blog post:
A couple of weeks ago, we revised our terms of use hoping to clarify some parts for our users. Over the past couple of days, we received a lot of questions and comments about the changes and what they mean for people and their information. Based on this feedback, we have decided to return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.Many of us at Facebook spent most of today discussing how best to move forward. One approach would have been to quickly amend the new terms with new language to clarify our positions further. Another approach was simply to revert to our old terms while we begin working on our next version. As we thought through this, we reached out to respected organizations to get their input.
Going forward, we've decided to take a new approach towards developing our terms. We concluded that returning to our previous terms was the right thing for now. As I said yesterday, we think that a lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective so we don't plan to leave it there for long.
More than 175 million people use Facebook. If it were a country, it would be the sixth most populated country in the world. Our terms aren't just a document that protect our rights; it's the governing document for how the service is used by everyone across the world. Given its importance, we need to make sure the terms reflect the principles and values of the people using the service.
Our next version will be a substantial revision from where we are now. It will reflect the principles I described yesterday around how people share and control their information, and it will be written clearly in language everyone can understand. Since this will be the governing document that we'll all live by, Facebook users will have a lot of input in crafting these terms.
You have my commitment that we'll do all of these things, but in order to do them right it will take a little bit of time. We expect to complete this in the next few weeks. In the meantime, we've changed the terms back to what existed before the February 4th change, which was what most people asked us for and was the recommendation of the outside experts we consulted.
If you'd like to get involved in crafting our new terms, you can start posting your questions, comments and requests in the group we've created-Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. I'm looking forward to reading your input.
Initially, Zuckerberg responded by saying, "In reality, we wouldn't share your information in a way you wouldn't want." As we all know, there's reality, and then there's lawyers. His "philoshopy" was benign, but was not reflected in the legal language. It's good to see it now will be, and that Facebook has made clear their intent to move towards a policy that more explicitly safeguards the copyrights and privacies of its users.
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Comments:
Congratulations to everyone on their hard work on this.
Time to take all my precious photos off and check the TOS for insanity every single day...
Consumerist, FTW! FTW!!! Nice job, guys. I would not have known the details without you.
Y gys r lltrt.
Cnsmrst jst gt PWND by CNN: [www.cnn.cm]
"Fcbk's trms f srvc clm tht th cmpny ds nt hv wnrshp vr cntnt"
Rdng cmprhnsn sklls ftw.
Barry Schnitt (Facebook) wrote20 minutes ago Hi everyone,
First, I want to apologize for the delay in response. It’s been a long day with lots of interesting and constructive discussions. Second, I want to thank you for your questions and concerns. As Mark expressed in his blog post on Monday, it was never our intention to confuse people or make them uneasy about sharing on Facebook. I also want to be very clear that Facebook does not, nor have we ever, claimed ownership over people’s content. Your content belongs to you.
We do need certain licenses in order to facilitate the sharing of your content through our service. That’s where the Terms of Use come in. The fact that you’ve raised the questions you have is proof that we haven’t done a good job explaining these licenses in the actual language of the document. In fact, as we were working to answer your questions, we realized the new version of the Terms might technically permit some of the hypothetical situations people have offered. I can assure you, however, that these hypotheticals aren’t ones we had in mind when writing the Terms, and that selling user information for profit or using it to advertise Facebook in some way was never part of our original intent. Assurances aren’t enough, though, and we plan to codify this in our revised Terms through simple language that defines Facebook’s rights much more specifically.
In the meantime, we’ve decided to revert to the old Terms as we work to address this. Mark has explained this in more detail in another blog post (http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=54746167130), and we’ve created a group where people can provide input (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=69048030774). We hope you’ll join this group and post comments. We promise to use these comments to help construct a new Terms of Use that reflects the principles around how people share and control their information, and that’s written clearly in language everyone can understand.
I hope you don’t think your participation in this discussion was a waste of time. Honestly, your questions were very helpful to us in arriving at what we believe is the right decision. Also, I think your questions will continue to be useful as we’re crafting a new Terms.
Again, thanks for the fruitful discussion and a special thanks to Anne Katherine and Julius for setting up this feedback forum. We hope you’ll all join our “Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities” group and continue discussing these issues there.
Best,
Barry
Barry Schnitt
Facebook Communications
barry@facebook.com
@PatrickIs2Smart: I think it's like PWNED!
But what would I know? I guess I don't have reading comprehension skills. :)
@Ben Popken: I tease the trolls, but I'm serious. I could not have kept up on what all this meant without these posts, I would have given up long before you did. Thanks for working late. *AHEM* Not that I ever had anything to worry about.
Facebook has maybe already sold all the informations to companies....Otherwise, great news for the new users. Great job the Consumerist!
Awesome, just remember they reserve the right to revert back at any time for any reason, and wouldn't technically, anything uploaded during the TOS period of the last 2 days still be their property forever in accordance with the previous terms. And if so, couldn't they have 1 second TOS reverts at awkward times to capture content without your knowledge and keep the rights forever?
Well I finally deleted my account today after seeing a helpful post on reddit on how to do so, this all after having it 'deactivated' for close to 2 years.
I feel relieved and better knowing that its gone. I know Facebook can be a useful service but anyone else could do it without all the legal hyperbole. They say its for this and that and pull at your heart strings to gain sympathy but it also means a lot of scary things as well.
Often bad things are covered up in 'good intentions' to make them palatable for the public. I find their activity disturbing in a precedent setting way and I don't want to support that type of behavior as being acceptable. Those who don't respect their rights will have them taken away from them, especially with the tool of 'good intentions'
Over the past couple of days, we received a lot of questions and comments about the changes and what they mean for people and their information.
More like:
Over the past couple of days, we received a lot of unfavourable media attention about the changes and what they mean for people and their information.
I'm sure they don't give a crap about what users actually want when it comes to rights in the digital world.
@GovernorWatts: My dear fellow, Facebook's reply was a strawman response. We all know they never claimed ownership of content. They "merely" claimed a perpetual, irrevocable license to do any damn thing they wanted with your content (like sell it or sublicense it). They're asserting all the advantages of ownership. Congratulations, you users still "own" your content---but you have no control over what Facebook, Inc. chooses to do with it. That part about "we will respect your privacy settings"? They could snip that bit out tomorrow, and what could you do about it?
They don't own your content, they merely pwn it.
@Crabby Cakes' Anaconda don't want none.:
Ha nice, my comment is in the article:
"Facebook should now be called The Information Blackhole," one Consumerist commenter proclaimed. "What goes in never comes out. Be careful what you huck in there."
Too bad CNN is just doing damage control and their basic logic is 'most people don't give a crap so it doesn't matter'. Disappointing but not at all surprising from a major media outlet.
@EmilyMu: Dear Barry, I didn't like the old terms of service either, which is why I never signed up for a Facebook account. But I certainly am gratified to see people taking a critical view of absurd, hyper-expansive IP claims in websites' terms of service. IP agreements should balance the interests of both the users and the site, but for a long time the balance has been tipped unfairly in favor of websites.
The problem is not limited to Facebook, of course: it's why I won't do photoprinting with (for example) Snapfish. They say, "As a condition to your Membership, you hereby grant Snapfish a perpetual, universal, non-exclusive, royalty-free right to copy, display, modify, transmit, make derivative works of, and distribute your Content, solely for providing or improving the Service" and "Snapfish may amend these Terms at any time, for any reason, and without notice, including the right to terminate the Service or any part of the Service." No thanks!
So I use a different photo printer that doesn't have such nonsense in their terms of service.
I sent that link to the original Consumerist article to one of my friends. Next thing I know, it started spreading like wildfire between my friends, their friends, their friends' friends...etc.
I'm happy to know they reverted to their old terms of service. This reminds me of that Beacon bull that they pulled a while back.
i'm going to post this on facebook when i'm done, but want to get some of your comments first:
(1) give me complete control over deleting (and i mean completely deleting, not just delinking) any photos/videos/my entire account
(2) recognize that i have the right to join and leave groups, friend and defriend people as i please. if you chose to keep this data for any internal purposes, keep it anonymous. you should not sell/give away data on what groups i joined and left, who i friended and defriended.
(3) realize that people may have private conversations on your site, especially with the facebook chat applet. at no time should any of my wall messages/private messages/facebok chat messages/status messages be sold or provided to a 3rd party without the express permission of both parties involved (if i write a message on Mark Z's wall, both him and i need to authorize before it's given to a 3rd party)
(4) there are lots of artists on the internet. you should not stifle their artistic potential by claiming rights to use their work when they post it on your website. What happens when i "share" a link to a webcomic that i didn't write? are you going to claim rights to that? also, i know that lots of people use copyrighted images as their "face pic" even though you require us to check a box that we own the copyrights... how are you going to claim rights to something that was illegally uploaded to your server?
@Gstein: it's late, and i've been wooting, so i still need to copyedit/tone down parts of this, i know (and spellcheck wouldn't hurt, either)
oh, and
(5) notify us of TOS changes upon login
Just gonna post one more thing here.
I've noticed in a lot of the comments people are downplaying the importance and/or power of the TOS like it doesn't matter well here is an example of facebook taking ownership of someone else's content, this was a comment I found on the original Facebook TOS post:
---
Willjan
Check out:
[www.digitaljournal.com]
A Canadian model poster her image on Facebook. On an assignment, she was murdered in China. Now Facebook is "licensing" her image for use in news reports.
---
If you look you will see they have All Rights Reserved and Attribution (The act of attributing, especially the act of establishing a particular person as the creator of a work of art): Facebook.com
Do you think they sent a representative to take a picture of this lady? No, of course not, they took it from her Facebook profile and now claim all rights to it.
A friend has been encouraging me to set up a Facebook account. After this, not gonna happen. Never gonna happen. I don't trust them.
Way to go, Team Consumerist! Putting right what once went wrong.
I don't know, I don't think I'd trust them to not operate under the terms of service they wanted to use any way and then call it a 'mistake' if and when they're caught using content that's been removed from Facebook.
I'm glad they're listening to the outcry. The new terms were just way too overreaching. But I still deleted my account (thanks to the person who suggested reddit!) because I'm disturbed at how they can change them without telling you. I'd like it if they notified you before the terms take effect, so you can opt to leave if you want. That'll teach me to not read things before I cyber-sign them!
"As we all know, there's reality, and then there's lawyers."
Hey now! Oh, wait, no, that's exactly the problem. :)
I could see exactly why they (or their lawyers, rather) went where they did with the TOS, which would have provided Facebook protection from some potentially very serious lawsuits. But I could also see at the same time why I would never, as a consumer, agree to that TOS.
As with the discussion about contracts of adhesion last week, I'm left wondering when we're going to get around to creating a new body of law that addresses contracts of adhesion, TOSes, and things like that. Because their lawyers aren't wrong to overreach to protect their clients ... but the users have no lawyers to overreach to protect them, and they don't get to settle on mutually-agreeable terms. Take it or leave it.
Thank you LandruBek for that statement. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only cynic when it comes to reading and interpreting contracts.
This is great news for consumers, but prepare for them to change the ToU at some point down the road when they think everyone is asleep at the wheel and has long forgotten about this little incident.
I don't trust Zuck & Co. They have shown that they are trying to be sneaky by not pointing out the changes like they did the reversion. They could just as easily post the updates, highlighting the changes, to our profiles and requiring us to accept the terms in order to continue using the service.
If the user is not made aware of the changes, he/she assumes they are the same as before. You cannot assume their agreement on unannounced changes. What reasonable man is going to read the ToU every day to see if there are any changes. That is essentially what they expect users to do if they are not willing to post a notice and require user acceptance to continue service.
I expect this to be a lead case in ToS/ToU for the future of web services. There will be major legal action in the short-term that will force web services to do a better job of notifying and explaining changes to users.
@Eyebrows McGee: So do you think the problem is that the lawyers were just thinking about protection, not PR, and nobody in PR has enough--what, sense? knowledge?--to see what those terms might have meant to the users? Because this has actually ended up damaging, not protecting, Facebook, and I'm thinking about who at the company I'd be mad it if I ran the thing. Perhaps TOSes, being so public, need to be examined more thoroughly for their PR impact and not just their legal impact.
CNN is covering this now and gave credit to the Consumerist, nice!
@Telekinesis123: I know what you mean. Everything I've heard about Mark Zuckerberg convinces me that he has no respect for people's privacy, and that is reflected in the way he executes Facebook.I haven't got rid of my account, but I am questioning my use of the site.
Right now, I'm glad that they've changed their TOS/TOU. I had thought of leaving FB, but realized that it would be impossible to do so - I rely on it so much to promote my online magazine...it's a business tool for me. I'm going to keep an eye on their changes though. If it gets too far, I may have to rethink.
@Lucky225:
You'll be safe as long as you wear your tin-foil hat. It also helps to frequently rub yourself all over with a magnet, which will scramble the control chips they've secretly implanted.
@Maxwell Vincent Crabb: And what about the missing last word of the phrase, too? "mthrfckr"
(joking, no banhammer, plz)
People complain and complain about the TOS, but they will continue to use the site as if it is some sort publicly provided utility that they have the god given right to use.
Yes, i do agree changing the TOS with out telling people was a bit shady...or wait, not it wasn't, considering one of the first lines of the original, and all subsequent TOS included the line "TERMS MAY CHANGE WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE"
If you don't want people seeing something, don't post it online, this is as bad as girls who post nudies to photobucket and then get mad when they turn up on another site.
I know im preaching to the choir, but i just wanted to give my 2 cents.
Very clever response on two counts.
First is the concession on principle. It's a classic opening gambit in hardball negotiations. Doing so gets the noise level down, and hands the battle off to the lawyers, activists and fine print. And, as we all know, you can get pretty much anything you want by carefully crafting the fine print.
Second is the broad invitation to help draft the Facebook Bill or Rights. This engages the existing community, and only brings more attention to the site. And it might even result in the discovery of a virtual James Madison.
Evil, but Brilliant. John Malone would be proud.
That's why no matter what they say, I still won't get on Facebook. Especially now.
I echo other posters in thanking Consumerist for the post on this, and everyone who commented for making it clearer to me. Without you guys, I might have gone on it anyway and lost something important.
After this latest 'hickup' and a recent news article where someone was able to hack into a FB members account and lock him out and then pose as him asking his friends for immediate $ help due to a supposed emergency abroad, I have now decided to remove my photos and content from FB and close my account. Too close to home and not worth the risk.
It took this individual 5 days to hear back from FB and clear up this mess - after which several friends were out 1,000s of dollars.
We aware!! Control your information.
Three cheers to Consumerist and its awesome staff. Great job, guys. Also, what do you think the Gawker "leadership" team's reaction was to the fury that Consumerist unleashed on the intarweb? My guess?
/facepalm
@floraposte: I think the lawyers have a duty to their clients to cover their asses as completely as possible. They're not responsible for their PR (especially if they're using outside instead of in-house attorneys), and very few lawyers are used to thinking about PR.
I'm not "condoning" it, but it's very easy to see how they landed in that situation. To give a bit of an analog, I do a little legal consulting for churches & other religious organizations (and for litigation firms working on lawsuits where a church is a party). One constant and ongoing problem is that the lawyers are trying to protect their church-client as strongly as possible, while the church is trying to create a structure that expresses its religious mission and beliefs (which might involve, say, shared governance instead of a corporate structure of authority). The lawyers tend to be familiar with particular modes of doing things, and are reluctant to step outside those modes because it introduces uncertainty, which means potential liability. The churches are often not sophisticated enough to know if there's an alternative mode of doing things to what the lawyers suggest. So you end up with lawyers trying to do their jobs and protect their clients who not only create absurd structures that seem very antagonistic for their purpose, but where the lawyer/client relationship itself gets antagonistic!
There's some movement in law schools towards understanding underlying motivations, particularly as part of negotiation and mediation, which is sort-of a baby version of worrying about PR and perception, but lawyers just really aren't oriented or trained that way, and I can hypothesize situations where being concerned about PR might actually conflict with your duty to your client and become ethically sticky.
w00t!