17 2 / 2009
Re: Facebook - settle the fuck down.
“I am going to quit Facebook, they’re going to steal my stuff!”
“OMG I can’t believe they’ll own everything EVEN AFTER I QUIT.”
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard claims like this in the past few days. Here are the facts:
- It’s legal jargon, it makes perfect sense. Yes, they own the COPY of your text in THEIR database. Yes, they own the COPY of the stupid links that you paste.
- Owning the COPY that they have posted on their servers is NOT the same as “right to publish and use however we’d like.”
- What do you honestly think Facebook would want to do with your status updates, the pictures of your dog’s first haircut, and your silly comments on people’s statuses?
- They do not own your imported Digg submissions, blog posts, and anything imported from other services. They own the copy that they are hosting for you on their databases. The pixels. Not the right to distribute.
- Get over yourselves, nothing you post on Facebook would be reused in any way. You’re not that important.
- It’s a necessary evil that there will be legal jargon in a service that has millions and millions of users. When one person complains that they deleted their account but their sent message still stays in someone’s inbox - you need a clause like this.
People - have some faith in the services you love. From people complaining about Tumblr charging 2 bucks to send another Valentine to people whining over Everquest 2 releasing demographic information for academic research - you are putting your LIVES on the internet. You are trusting in other services for your entertainment and communication. Have a little faith in the lawyers behind the ToS’es, do you think they really want to get burned when they fuck everyone over? Nah.
Chill out. Welcome to the internet, where everything you say is unimportant and available to everyone.
