facebook’s new terms of service: “anything you upload can be used by facebook”

Thanks to facebook I’ve come in contact with many of my childhood buddies, neighbors, old school mates to university friends. It’s a place to be. Even when you’re busy, you just login once a day to check what your friends and families are up to. It provides sleek, friendly and relatively non-intrusive environment to interact.

I’ve to say that I’ve been quite reluctant to install third-party apps and post family photos due to privacy concerns, but this new terms of service makes it worse. Now anything you post or upload can be used by facebook even after you close your account. In previous terms of service, facebook’s rights on your content would expire after you closed your account, but not any more.

via: Consumerist

Update (17Feb09): facebook ceo, Zuckerberg has written a blog post about the issue, trying to explain why they need this TOS.

Our philosophy that people own their information and control who they share it with has remained constant. A lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective of the rights we need to provide this service to you. Over time we will continue to clarify our positions and make the terms simpler.

Update (18Feb09): After a global complain facebook has returned to previous terms of service (until they find a new language to clarify their position). Zuckerberg explains it in his Update on Terms

We concluded that returning to our previous terms was the right thing for now. As I said yesterday, we think that a lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective so we don’t plan to leave it there for long.

Update (27Feb09): Finally, democracy has come to facebook, it’s allowing users to review comment and vote over it’s future policies. That the way to go, well done facebook!