If you’ve been on Facebook at all within the last week, you’ve probably noticed this status update masquerading as a legally-binding notice:
Every time Facebook revises its privacy policies, it’s become a tradition for Facebook users to react by copying and pasting a supposed legal notice informing Facebook that their cat photos and political rants are THEIR property.
Unfortunately, law doesn’t quite work that way. Similar to how you can’t change your mobile contract by calling AT&T and listing off what you don’t like to a customer representative, you cannot change which of Facebook’s terms apply to you by posting them to your profile.
In joining the social media site, you have entered into a legal contract with Facebook, and you cannot retroactively negate those terms. Your acceptance of Facebook’s privacy policy and terms means you have granted the site “a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license” to use the intellectual property you post through Facebook.
However, this contract requires Facebook to live up to their side of the bargain, as well, and you can rest easy knowing that Facebook is not seeking ownership of your intellectual property, nor is the social media site using your materials in any way that hasn’t been stated in the site’s terms and privacy guide.
Additionally, you already have copyright protections. The instant you create a “work of artistic expression,” it belongs to you. Facebook has made no claim to these copyrights, clearly stating in its terms,“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.”
So, basically, what all this means is that Facebook does have a license to use any information and copyrighted works that are not protected in a user’s privacy and application settings. For example, any photos or status updates set to a “public” privacy setting are fair game.
If you’d like to manage who is seeing what you post, Facebook’s benevolent Privacy Dinosaur will walk you through the basics of controlling your privacy settings on the social media site.
Also, the latest Facebook Privacy Basics guide is written in a way that is very easy to read and understand. Even the individuals who continue to confuse Timeline posts for private messages should be able to catch on.
While it’s unfortunate these boilerplate legal notices are, in fact, a hoax, they are at least effective in increasing the awareness of Facebook’s policy changes.
Sources:
http://www.thelegalartist.com/your-copyrights-are-already-protected-on-facebook/
