Facebook Follies: The New Terms of Agreement

I am a user of Facebook for about two years now,my account is largely for personal networking with friends, family and professional colleagues in the Greater Toronto Area.

Late last week I found out Facebook changed its terms of agreement, when I found out what the ramifications were, two words "holy shit" entered my mind immediately. Essentially boiled down, once you post something onto Facebook, they have the right to licence and sub licence your creative works even if you decide to delete your account. They own your family pics and other content and reserve the right to use them for purposes of promotion long after you are gone.

I am not posting any of my photographic work to Facebook until this is clarified. I think Mark Zukerberg has a lot of answer too with his stakeholders (myself included) with this overkill terms of agreement. I think he and the Facebook executive team better listen to the stakeholders with this, if the Facebook groups against the new terms of agreement grow into the the hundreds of thousands, a little change in the legal fine print becomes a big problem. I think I am going to need a little more from Zukerberg than,"Trust us, there is no hidden agenda."

Will I stop using Facebook? No, but I am going to be a lot more careful what I share in terms of my creative content. My suggestion for those keen to share photos with friends and family, get a Flickr Account, at least you can control the copyright of your images on there.