Facebook terms and conditions: why you don't own your online life

[Jazzy]

When joining a social network, you are likely to spend more time considering which photo you will use on your profile than reading the lengthy terms of service document. And yet, off-putting though Facebook's 14,000-word terms of service and data use policy might be, it is a legal contract between you and the social network.



What rights have users granted to online services such as Facebook, Twitter and Google? Does posting content on these networks mean forfeiting your ownership of your photos, for example?



What the terms of service say



Facebook

With over a billion users, Facebook is the definitive homepage for many web users. Its terms of service, data use and cookie use policy span more than 14,000 words over eight separate pages and would take even the quickest reader more than two hours to dig through. But what rights have you handed over to Facebook?



Specifically for photos and video uploaded to the site, Facebook has a license to use your content in any way it sees fit, with a license that goes beyond merely covering the operation of the service in its current form. Facebook can transfer or sub-license its rights over a user’s content to another company or organisation if needed. Facebook’s license does not end upon the deactivation or deletion of a user’s account, content is only released from this license once all other users that have interacted with the content have also broken their ties with it (for example, a photo or video shared or tagged with a group of friends).



Twitter

Fast becoming the second social network behind Facebook, Twitter's model for monetising the service has yet to be established, a fact clearly seen in its terms of service. Twitter's terms give it broad scope to use, change and distribute any photos, writing or video posted through Twitter's service, to any other forms of media or distribution method it wishes, including those which Twitter has not yet thought of or developed. Similarly to Facebook, Twitter's license also allows it to pass any of your content to any partner organisations for any reason.



Google

Making only small waves in the field of social networking, Google+ is probably not the place where most users first agreed to Google's terms of service. Most users probably signed up through one of Google’s many online services like Gmail, Google Maps or Google Drive. Luckily Google has a modest set of terms when it comes to user’s content, restricting its use of such content only for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.

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Were you aware of what you signed up for?



Do you read the terms when you sign up?

 

[Evil Eye]

I actually do read (or skim

) these things sometimes. It kinda depends on what I'm signing up for.

Pretty sure I read Google's and Dropbox's terms. I read some government terms as well... Basically anything that has legal power over me or has me uploading personal stuff to it.

I should point out that EU legislation means EULAs don't have a lot of power here.