Smile, you’re on Facebook

Posted by admin on Mar 10, 2010 in Issues & Ideas | 0 comments

Facebook is a private company, founded by Mark Zuckerberg on February 4, 2004. With a value of 7.9 billion dollars, and 400 million active users, Facebook is the largest social networking medium in the world.

By providing an avenue for the users to upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet, Facebook’s mission to make the world more open and connected is met.

Facebook’s terms of service give it the right to do as it wishes with users’ photos, links and videos. Many wonder whether a user retains the copyright and other legal rights to material uploaded. Facebook’s FAQ answers this question in the follow manner, “Yes, you retain the copyright to your content. When you upload your content, you grant us a license to use and display that content.”

In this statement, Facebook makes a distinction between ownership (copyright) and usage (licensing). The user still owns the content (photos, videos, etc.), however, the user has granted Facebook the rights to use the content however Facebook determines.

Michael Geist, a professor at the University of Ottawa and an Internet law expert, expounds on the situation: “A license is a legal agreement in which the party that has the rights in the photograph conveys certain rights to the licensee.” Geist continues, “the photographer has rights [to] the photograph. They retain those rights, but they transfer to Facebook certain rights to use the work.”

The rights that are transferred to Facebook by any user allows Facebook to “…use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works, and distribute” all content that the user posts on Facebook.

Facebook alleges that it won’t use the information a user shares online for anything that the user has not asked it to. However, Cheryl Smith, a professional advisor, found that this was not the case when her husband was subjected to an ad for “Hot Singles” featuring Smith’s photo.

A Facebook spokesperson commented, “Facebook occasionally pairs advertisements with relevant social actions from a user’s friends to create Facebook Ads.” However, the question begs to be posed: is Facebook justified in allowing users’ photos to be used by a company that simply pays to be advertised on its site? Can you imagine if we lent out our cars like we lend out our photos to Facebook?