kev/null design/book/comics/games/photos/presentations

Facebook Has License to Sell Your Photos

I’m seeing two trends lately. The first is that more people are posting with to Facebook exclusively or both to Facebook and Flickr. The second is an increasing number of my photographer friends using Facebook to promote their photography by posting their photos there. I can understand both of these trends, of course. Facebook is where the social network truly is and not everybody uses Flickr or other services.

However, a friend recently mentioned Facebook’s licensing policies as they pertain to photos and all content uploaded. I took a look and hear is what I found (emphasis my own):

When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

Now optimistically, this means, “we can use your stuff to help promote Facebook” but there is certainly sufficient language there to suggest they can do whatever the hell they want with it, including sell the photos. Granted, there’s a clause right after that says:

If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.

But that hardly makes me feel better since wherever I store my photos, I plan to store for a long time. On Flickr, I can choose how my photos are licensed to the world and who gets to use them. As far as I know, nobody – not Flickr, not Yahoo! – can sell my photos or use them without my permission unless I explicitly set a license permitting such to the public.

Is this something that I’m just late to the game with? Is it common knowledge? Or am I reading too much into the text?


4 Comments

That’s certainly how it sounds to me. Sure, even in the snippet you posted, there’s a clause limiting to use “on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof,” but that’s not the only part of that clause, and even that’s not very limiting: consider a coffee table “Face Book” that has the Facebook logo on the cover. That’s clearly “in connection with the site,” and can be sold however they please. And, while others might point out that it only says “distribute, not “sell,” it also says for “commercial” purposes, which could very easily sneak its way in. Again, consider the “Face Book” where they could claim what they’re selling is the cover design and bound paper, while simply “distributing” your photos along with it.

To be fair, though, a policy like this also has to stand up to the test of practicality. Sure, Facebook can do all of the above, but doing so would invite far more public outcry than I think they’d be willing to deal with. It’s an easy way to cover themselves for legitimate purposes they have in mind, but I highly doubt they’ll go so far as to sell content without user consent. While they’ve established in some other areas that they’re willing to sacrifice some of their users’ trust, I don’t think they’d be so bold as to do something so many people could identify with.

After all, how many Facebook users even know what beacon is? But how many know what it means for somebody to sell their pictures without compensation? I don’t think Facebook’s prepared to deal with that.

Posted by Marty Alchin on 4 August 2008 @ 9am

Yeah, ever since Facebook, I’ve started making a habit of reading terms of service — most share about 95 percent of their boilerplate DNA, but the devil is in the details.

http://www.new.facebook.com/home.php#/video/video.php?v=2442906409

I would guess a typical use would be for a “sizzle reel” type Facebook promotional bit. More worrisome would be a tie-in or co-branding with a TV show or some such (read: the sublicense part).

Posted by Jackson West on 4 August 2008 @ 11pm

Kevnull, thanks for pointing this out. I’m already weary about the sketchy NDAs that most web companies make visitors and prospective employees sign. This really takes the cake.

Posted by Barce on 5 August 2008 @ 11pm

You should join the “Facebook owns your photos” group:
http://www.new.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=6314950779

Posted by Marsh Gardiner on 9 September 2008 @ 1pm

Leave a Comment

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Raptr Launches in Public Beta