Facebook buckles to complaints, reverts to old ‘Terms of Use’
Just a day after it sparked a public outcry, Facebook has removed controversial language in its terms of use that apparently gave the company perpetual rights to user-submitted content.
Facebook has temporarily reverted to its previous terms of use, which it had replaced Feb. 4, and has set up a new group allowing Facebook members to contribute their thoughts regarding the concepts and protections the new document ought to include.
Weilding his oft-used analogy of Facebook as its own country of sorts, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the group would, over time, develop the “Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.”
“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,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Given its importance, we need to make sure the terms reflect the principles and values of the people using the service.”
Zuckerberg said the new terms of use could take weeks to develop. Meanwhile, the temporary terms of use document includes a phrase clarifying that if you upload photos or text to Facebook, “you retain full ownership of all of your User Content and any intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights associated with your User Content.”
The reaction to the new terms of use, which were first brought to national attention by the Consumerist blog Sunday, stopped short of being an utter PR calamity similar to the fallout from the introduction of Facebook’s “Beacon” advertising program in 2007. When it was first launched, Beacon tracked Facebook users’ shopping on third party sites and then automatically posted information about their purchases to their friends’ news feeds.
Above: A screen shot of the new “Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities” page.
Facebook made it an opt-in system after the resultant public furor; thousands of users and advocacy groups such as Moveon.org decried Beacon as a blatant invasion of privacy. Zuckerberg later said that Facebook not only mishandled the launch of the Beacon system, but also the company’s response to the public’s reaction. A class action law suit about Beacon was filed against the company in August 2008.
Perhaps having learned from that mistake, the company this time immediately posted an apology on the homepage of the new “Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities” group.
“We apologize for the confusion around these issues. We never intended to claim ownership over people’s content even though that’s what it seems like to many people. This was a mistake and we apologize for the confusion.”
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