This site doesn’t allow pinning to Pinterest or posting of any content by secondary parties to Facebook or MySpace. Any infringement of copyrighted property will be met with a) a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice, b) a bill for usage of any images and c) a potential lawsuit for copyright infringement. Spam comments will be deleted (links to other services not related to photography are not welcome in this blog; please e-mail me prior to posting a comment containing such links. I do not support any links to secondary photography services that do not offer customer service guarantees). Please contact the owner with any questions. Thanks for visiting!

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Are Your Links Safe On Facebook? Think Twice Before Posting.

Digging into FB's Terms of Service opens up a real "copyright" can of worms. The whole concept of tacit acceptance when signing up for Facebook is problematic. When you sign up for Facebook, you agree to their Terms of Service by clicking on the "Do you agree to the Terms of Service" checkmark box. That's all they need to grab you by the short n' curlies. There was a brouhaha in 2009 back when Facebook tried to do a complete rights grab in having an unending licence and no way to exit from that licence. But unfortunately for those of us who use Facebook, the pushback didn't go far enough.

The main thing is that people are wandering around thinking that their blog content is safe. When you read the TOS, you see that even links aren't safe.

1. For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

The underlined part is where I feel that they get you on the links. The "in connection with". You post a link, it is posted "in connection with" Facebook. And they're able to grab any content from the link that you've supplied. Verify it with a copyright lawyer if you're unconvinced.

So as far as I'm concerned, I'm done with posting photos on my Facebook. Those who want to see my work can go directly to my blog.

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