Facebook: What's Yours Is Now Theirs

Facebook is one hard beast to avoid, especially when everyone you know is using it to share news and pictures. BUT, did you ever take the time to read Facebook’s terms and conditions for any intellectual property you post? I’m referring to the millions of photos that people post every week if not every day. What belongs to you now belongs to them. See for yourself.  

Facebook is the number one social networking sight in the whole universe, and their terms tell you in black and white that anything you post is THEIRS to do whatever they want with: (IP = “Intellectual Property”)

For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos ("IP content"), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License"). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

BUT......

When you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others).

In other words, even though you've deleted the content, they still have it and can do whatever they want with it. AND if you’re like me and you embed metadata into your file (name, copywright info, etc.) you’re still out of luck. Facebook strips out all of that information necessary for you to retain your rights. 

That’s it...you have no rights and no say and you get nothing should they decide to use your photo for any kind of advertising. Facebook’s terms are unfavorable and it seems like most people really don’t worry about it. I can tell you from experience that the idea of someone using my picture without my knowledge who I am not in any way affiliated with...let's just say I’m no fan of D Magazine anymore.

There’s a few things you can do that will make your photo not so appealing to the picture-stealers, and yet not have a major impact on how your photo looks. Apparently, most people don’t use any kind of editing software before they upload photos to Facebook. That means they’re uploading the highest resolution they can. Facebook will still compress the photo before you can view it, but the high-res photo you uploaded is now in their hands. If you use some kind of photo editor, it should have a way to scale down the resolution (some editors refer to it as “quality”). This won’t hurt your photo and will make it slightly less desirable when Facebook is fishing for a good photo to sell for a “Meet singles in your area” ad. It’s also a good idea to scale down the image to about 500 pixels on the longest side. Another method of increasing your photo's undesirability is using a watermark. I usually put my logo or just a copywright notice off to the side of the images.

It's important to note that the only guaranteed method of protecting your images is by not posting them at all.

Last week Facebook announced they are going to begin supporting high-res images. You'll be able to download them but when you view them they’ll still be considerably compressed. My advice: AVOID posting high-res images. That only makes them more appealing to be used for something you didn’t intend. 

If you want to share high resolution images, stick with Flickr.

I enjoy using Facebook and manage two Facebook pages...one personal and one business. It's fun and it's a great tool for keeping in touch. Just be careful of what you put in their hands.