[Springboard] Not correct that everything you publish there belongs to Facebook

Sat May 8 20:34:25 CDT 2010

I was rather disturbed by this idea that "everything you publish belongs to Facebook."  So I contacted one of my colleagues at The Falls Church who set up our Facebook page for us, and here is his response:

Susan

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I went to the Facebook site and checked their terms of service.  I found the following (emphasis added):
"You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition: 
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."
If you are interested in reviewing the full terms, you can see them at: http://www.facebook.com/terms.php
The terms of use are based on the community principles found at: http://www.facebook.com/principles.php
And are supplemented by the page terms: http://www.facebook.com/terms_pages.php
And the privacy policy: http://www.facebook.com/policy.php

So we retain ownership, but we grant license for the content to be shared.  There is definitely a longstanding legal distinction between content ownership and licensing for distribution.  For example, when you purchase a music CD, you purchase a license to have and play back that CD, but you don't actually own the rights to the recording on the CD.  Now, one can easily get confused by the difference between granting ownership of the content and granting a pretty nearly unlimited license to use the content, but the major distinction is that a license is revocable and generally non-exclusive, while ownership is by definition total and exclusive.  

It's worth noting that this kind of license is pretty standard for most material posted on the internet in general, like flickr, youtube, blogging sites, etc.  You have to grant them some sort of license in order for them to make the content available to others for you.  The only way to avoid agreeing to these sorts of things is to run your own web hosting service, where you own the servers, and pay for the server software and the fast internet connection to hook them up.

I do generally agree with David's assessment (in the first message) of the pros and cons, but I personally don't think Facebook is that difficult to use -- although I realize that this is very subjective and some may find it a little overwhelming.

__________________________________________________
Andrew Schooley
Audiovisual Engineering Specialist
The Falls Church :: Falls Church, Virginia
703.574.4375 :: aschooley at thefallschurch.org
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-----Original Message-----
From: oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Judi White
Sent: Saturday, May 01, 2010 8:21 AM
To: OECommunity Community; Springboard Dialogue; Dialogue' Listserv
Cc: David Dunn
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] [Springboard] Facebook pros and cons — and help sorting it out

When you signed up for facebook you agreed that everything you publish belongs to facebook. It's a legal CYA thing and I had to sign the same as a freelancer for the local paper I write for.  In the case of the archives it would not make sense to put stuff on there - as a precaution

.--
Judi White
25 North Lake Street
Crescent City, FL 32112
Phone: (386) 569-6956

---- David Dunn <dmdunn1 at gmail.com> wrote: 
Hello colleagues.

I'm duly settled in Chicago: I know where to sleep, where to eat, where to brush my teeth and where to go to get online. Life is good. Pam and Marge are hustling to prepare for the first wave of colleagues. I put my weight to the wheel finally this afternoon. You'll see stuff start to flow tomorrow.

I'm still wrestling with Facebook. For all of the hoopla, I think it's a mixed bag and not at all intuitive. So here is my short list of pros and cons, plus a couple of sentences about what I think it's good for. 

Pros
� Facebook is popular and has lots of members who can access peoples,' organizations' and groups' pages
� Facebook is free
� Facebook has some clever ways to facilitate networking and spreading the word about something of interest
� Facebook has a simple way to keep friends up to date on what you're up to.
� Facebook has the ability to handle discussions, communications and audio-video-photo media
� Facebook is especially attractive to younger generations
� [what would you add?]

Cons
� Facebook has powerful privacy controls, but they're not that easy to figure out
� Facebook has a learning curve re how to actually use it
� Facebook has a complex user interface that takes some getting used to
� Facebook tempts us to share more of our personal information that it's prudent to share online
� [what would you add?]

On balance: what's Facebook good for?
� Facebook is good for scanning a lot of information on what Friends are doing and thinking: it's a "news stream or 'feed' "
� Facebook is also good for easily sharing information with the people you want to share information with. Why wait until Christmas?
� Facebook is especially good in making connections and spreading the word about things you value.

�and not good for?
� In my opinion, Facebook is not a replacement for 
	a "wiki" like our Repository, 
	the ICA USA website (ica-usa.org) or 
	a face-to-face virtual meeting platform (like GoTo Meeting, etc.)

Bottom line
I think I'll personally stick to using Facebook as a sort of public face and portal to things that I'm interested in. For the Archives Project, we'll post photos and brief updates to the Facebook page, add photos to my Gallery and Flickr, and add my own and colleagues' blog entries to Spiritjourneys.org.

See the two attachments for help getting on top of Facebook. The first is visual-spacial, the second is rational-verbal.

To be continued.

David

David Dunn
dmdunn1 at gmail.com

Creative direction and spiritual companioning

My Facebook page with International Conference Center photos
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2056389&id=1021391491&l=cfb42f03a1

My "MobileMe" gallery with the same photos, available to download
http://gallery.me.com/dmansel/100078

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