Would it spoil the party to point out that Facebook's original terms of service were insane? [1] That they promised something that Facebook was unable to deliver? They allowed you to post content to Facebook, wait until that content was quoted, copied, pasted, or remixed by others, then pull the content off and sue Facebook if any of those quotations, copies, or remixes persisted anywhere on Facebook's site. Ask the MPAA how well that would have worked out for you in practice.
We all know that removing something which has been posted to the web is like removing the proverbial drop of food coloring from a swimming pool. With their new TOS, Facebook is stating something that's been true all along: They're running a swimming pool. Once your content is exposed to its userbase you can't take that content back.
I am reminded of a passage in J. Michael Straczynski's screenwriting book where he talks about how important it is to avoid sending unsolicited manuscripts to movie or TV producers. They will send the manuscripts back unopened [2] and refuse to deal with you again, because:
One individual I encountered had written a spec Terminator 3 script, hoping to either send it to producer James Cameron and later sue Cameron because this person was sure this would be the next story or tempt Cameron to sue him, which would force Cameron to read the script, after which he would be so thoroughly blinded by the script's brilliance that he'd buy it instantly. (No, I'm not making this up.)... Unsolicited manuscripts are the constant nightmare of any producer.
Perhaps Facebook has become large and old enough to have had its first encounter with such a copyright troll. The solution to this problem, as employed by every producer in Hollywood, is to require a release form before you'll read anything.
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[1] Note that I am not a lawyer. The lawyers in the audience are welcome to explain that I'm wrong.
[2] "It will be returned in a larger envelope, unopened (although there will often be a tiny tear in one of the corners of the original envelope, made by a secretary to verify that it contained a script)." -- JMS
What you're pointing here, is that even a "non-evil" company can nearly be forced by the sake of self-protection and simplicity to have abusive clauses. Maybe this shows the need of active regulation and arbitration in the domain.
In France we have somthing supposed to ensure data privacy called "CNIL" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNIL ). Is there some equivalent in the US?
I don't think we're talking about a data privacy issue here. Facebook's TOS, old and new, states that its rights to use your data are "subject to your privacy settings". The issue here is copyright, which is not the same thing.
Meanwhile, if you're saying that it would be great if we had a regulatory regime that recognized the reality of the Internet -- where anything you publish effectively belongs to the world and cannot thereafter be retracted or centrally controlled -- amen to that! But that's not the world we live in. We live in a world full of lawyers who mail C&D notices to indie filmmakers if they happen to photograph a building or a sign or a person without getting a signed release first; a world where a lot of modern art can't afford to legally exist because it costs too much to clear the rights to all the components of that art. Under those circumstances, I find it hard to blame Facebook for throwing up their hands and demanding a waiver before you publish anything on their platform.
It's true I would like to live in a world which would care about people rights and privacy before copyrighted content; I know I'm pretty idealistic. But in this case it seems to me they are fighting evil with a lot bigger evil.
That's kind of the downside to capitalism: more freedom means more people taking advantage of the system. The problem's that sometimes taking advantage leads to really cool stuff getting done. It's a mixed blessing as always.
We all know that removing something which has been posted to the web is like removing the proverbial drop of food coloring from a swimming pool. With their new TOS, Facebook is stating something that's been true all along: They're running a swimming pool. Once your content is exposed to its userbase you can't take that content back.
I am reminded of a passage in J. Michael Straczynski's screenwriting book where he talks about how important it is to avoid sending unsolicited manuscripts to movie or TV producers. They will send the manuscripts back unopened [2] and refuse to deal with you again, because:
One individual I encountered had written a spec Terminator 3 script, hoping to either send it to producer James Cameron and later sue Cameron because this person was sure this would be the next story or tempt Cameron to sue him, which would force Cameron to read the script, after which he would be so thoroughly blinded by the script's brilliance that he'd buy it instantly. (No, I'm not making this up.)... Unsolicited manuscripts are the constant nightmare of any producer.
Perhaps Facebook has become large and old enough to have had its first encounter with such a copyright troll. The solution to this problem, as employed by every producer in Hollywood, is to require a release form before you'll read anything.
---
[1] Note that I am not a lawyer. The lawyers in the audience are welcome to explain that I'm wrong.
[2] "It will be returned in a larger envelope, unopened (although there will often be a tiny tear in one of the corners of the original envelope, made by a secretary to verify that it contained a script)." -- JMS