Facebook vs. Twitter on copyright
As a follow-up to my [Last Post](http://jimdelaney.net/?p=181 “Facebook and copyright”), you may want to take a look at Twitter’s much more enlightened (and easier to read) copyright, from their [Terms of Service](http://twitter.com/tos “Terms of Service”)
–SNIP–
Copyright (What’s Yours is Yours)
1. We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to the Twitter service. Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours. You can remove your profile at any time by deleting your account. This will also remove any text and images you have stored in the system.
2. We encourage users to contribute their creations to the public domain or consider progressive licensing terms.
3. Twitter undertakes to obey all relevant copyright laws. We will review all claims of copyright infringement received and remove content deemed to have been posted or distributed in violation of any such laws. To make a claim, please provide us with the following:
1. A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or the person authorized to act on its behalf;
2. A description of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed;
3. A description of the infringing material and information reasonably sufficient to permit Twitter to locate the material;
4. Your contact information, including your address, telephone number, and email;
5. A statement by you that you have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and
6. A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and, under the pains and penalties of perjury, that you are authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner.
–SNIP–
Where would you rather post your content? This all has me thinking about the need for open social networking tools that allow us to keep in contact without being in a walled garden. Wired recently ran an [interesting story](http://www.wired.com/software/webservices/news/2007/08/open_social_net “Slap in the Facebook”) that reviewed different ways to replicate Facebook functionality with more open tools. They’re not there yet, but they’re [close](http://howto.wired.com/wiredhowtos/index.cgi?page_name=replace_facebook_using_open_social_tools;action=display;category=Live “Replacing Facebook Using Open Social Tools”)
Facebook and copyright
From [Facebook's Terms of Service](http://utoronto.facebook.com/terms.php “Terms of Service”)
–SNIP–
When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.
–SNIP–
There is more to this that bothers me other than the silliness of the prose. If I read correctly, by posting photos of my two year old daughter on Facebook, I give them a full and transferable license to use such content. This goes for other content as well. I doubt that they would, but they *could* sell anything on my profile on Ebay.
Strangely, I have never been concerned about copyright or ownership over content, and avoid publishing in places that restrict access. But to give Facebook this leverage just feels…dirty.
I have become quite accustomed to using Facebook, mainly as a realtime address-book of sorts, but this is too much. Photos going down as we speak, and perhaps the rest will go soon.
links for 2007-09-28
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Looks like a good way to implement APA – Includes newspapers!
links for 2007-09-25
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Good PDF annotation tool for OSX
links for 2007-09-20
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Good list of resources from U Collorado
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Online coversion to convert just about any kind of file.
links for 2007-09-18
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Excellent post from a physicist about the utility function in economics
