Facebook & their photo copyright theft... what on earth are they on!

Companies like Facebook are sneaking up on our rights! It happened with Google Chrome when they applied a new End User License Agreement which effectively stripped users of most of their photo rights. It seems the hideous history continues to repeat itself with the fastiduous EULA of Facebook joining the bandwagon of deceit... I may be overacting a little here. After all, Google did amend its EULA for Chrome after a little bad press, and so maybe Facebook will too.

On the other hand, even after closing or deleting your Facebook profile, you will find your pictures, videos and any personal media still up on the site for all to see - if it has featured on anyone else's profile. Not good news for photographers or even people who've gotten tired of Facebook and want their anonymity back.

We must remember that Facebook is a money making company, a big one at that, and EULAs are notoriously hard to get right and are written to instruct and protect the users and (hugely) to protect the company from lawsuits. Most people don't read EU License Agreements, aren't they the most boring read ever? But it's surely overdue that we all read and know exactly what we're getting into.

I leave you with a statement from Netlab founder Barry Wellman, used in a BBC article about the future of the internet:

"The less one is powerful, the more transparent his or her life. The powerful will remain much less transparent."