Commentary: Another assault on Facebook user data

Facebook is conducting another assault on its members privacy and uploaded content. In late August of 2013, Facebook announced that it is planning to change two important “fine print” documents – the Data Use Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. This resulted in another round of negative responses from users and content providers whose data are posted and distributed through Facebook.

The American Society of Media Photographers has warned its’ members to become more familiar with the proposed changes to Facebook’s Terms of Service. The new ToS gives the media giant permission to have more leeway in the use of user’s name, likeness, content, uploaded images, and browsing habits in selling advertising and in commercial and sponsored content – all without any compensation to the FB user. In a recent blog post, the A.S.M.P. explains what the company has changed, and what this might mean to photographers in terms of their copy rights. According to A.S.M.P., once the proposed changes take effect, there is nothing that FB users can do to limit how FB can use their personal information and uploaded content to profit from it.

Here is an excerpt from the proposed Facebook ToS changes; the bold text are new additions to the ToS, the strikethroughs include language that is being removed from the ToS (source: A.S.M.P.)

You can use your privacy settings to limit how your name and profile picture may be associated with commercial, sponsored, or related content (such as a brand you like) served or enhanced by us. You give us permission to use your name, and profile picture, content, and information in connection with commercial, sponsored, or related that content (such as a brand you like) served or enhanced by us, subject to the limits you place. This means, for example, that you permit a business or other entity to pay us to display your name and/or profile picture with your content or information, without any compensation to you. If you have selected a specific audience for your content or information, we will respect your choice when we use it.

A.S.M.P. is urging photographers who use Facebook in their line of business to become better informed, read, and analyze the proposed changes and how they might affect them personally and professionally. A.S.M.P. is asking photographers to spread the word among their friends and associates, and get involved by calling for action that these changes to privacy and commercial grab of the on-line content does not become a norm.

The proposed change in policy enabling Facebook to appropriate user content and personal information is nothing new, and we can expect more of this type of commercial grab of copyrighted material in the future. Seventeen months ago, Facebook agreed to spend a staggering $1 billion dollars to acquire a rapidly growing photo-sharing site Instagram. Many financial analysts questioned the reasoning behind the high price, especially knowing that the market valuation of Instagram was $500 million at the time of purchase. A year later, Instagram hasn’t made any significant profit to justify the amount of money Facebook paid for it.

At the end of 2012, Instagram announced a change in policy that would allow it to sell user’s photographs without notification or payment to the content creator. Under the new rules, Facebook – the Instagram’s new owner – would claim the perpetual rights to license all public material posted on Instagram to companies or any other organization, including use for advertising purposes. This move sparked a widespread outcry and condemnation by the public. Instagram, to their credit, backed down and stated that it will not implement the new policy (until ‘the next time’ it tries).

Photographers have always been wary of Facebook’s approach to copyright and creator’s rights. Many do not upload images directly to Facebook but insert links to their material posted on-line elsewhere, like the image sharing site 500px. It has been widely known, and commented on, that Facebook strips all the embedded IPTC metadata which provide information about the image creator , copyright and contact information for the photographer. For example, images that I post on-line contain embedded data that provide my name as the author, a link to my web site with contact information, statement that the image is copyrighted including a notice that “No reproduction of any kind is allowed without prior written permission”, and a link to a web page that defines the terms of allowable use (e.g. I do not mind if students ask for permission to use my images for school assignments). All of that information would be stripped from images uploaded to Facebook. It is relevant to mention here that the new US Copyright Law has a special reference to ‘orphan works‘, a copyrighted work whose owner is impossible to identify or contact.

By stripping the IPTC metadata, Facebook is preventing good-faith users (one who had made a “reasonably diligent effort to find the owner”) from identifying the rights holder or being able to legally license the work.  Funny enough, a business model that Facebook is so aggressively pushing includes commercialization of images for which they made difficult to determine the original creator. For a good overview of the issues on copyright, fair use and orphan works see this article by Mickey Osterreicher, originally published by the Media Law Resource Center.

So, what do you think? Is Facebook going too far in trying to make money from marketing your personal information and content that you created? How do these changes affect you? Send us your thoughts & comments.