Legal Research

The Inmates Are Running The Asylum

Which is a good thing, as far as Facebook is concerned. Recently they changed their Terms of Service so that they claimed the right to use the content from your profile even after you remove it or terminate your account. This caused an uproar among the FB faithful. And as he did with the Beacon kerfuffle, Mark Zuckerburg had to back down, saying:

“We still have work to do to communicate more clearly about these issues, and our terms are one example of this. 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.”

I’m not a big fan of Facebook. But it is encouraging to me to see the fan user base wield such influence over Facebook’s policies.

Full post as published by Jenkins Webblits on February 18, 2009 (boomark / email).