Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Facebook copyright uproar

These technology legal problems come and go so quickly; it's a good thing I'm a librarian and not a blogger.

The latest copyright news that I'm reporting on a few days after it's fresh is the latest privacy concern coming from users of (very) popular social networking site Facebook. It seems that Facebook recently changed its terms of use to retain ownership of pretty much anything and everything that users post, from the moment it's posted until forever. (Maybe Colbert was right about copyright.) Previously, Facebook retained rights only until the content was deleted.

According to the NY Times, the changes were made a couple of weeks ago but went largely unnoticed until popular consumer-issues blog Consumerist published the new language this weekend.

Amidst widespread protests from Facebook users, chairman Mark Zuckerman announced today that the company will revert to the old version of the terms of use until they can come up with a new agreement that will satisfy users' demands for less invasive terms of use.

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