Saturday, January 29, 2011

Who Owns Your Facebook Data?

On the surface this seems like a silly question. Surely you own your Facebook photos, status updates, notes, links, or anything else you've shared. Because, after all, you put them there. Right?
Not necessarily. Facebook's terms of service make it clear that, while you technically "own" your own stuff, you're granting them "a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post."
In other words, you own it, but they can do whatever they want with it. Hence the "sponsored stories" Facebook just announced: Ads that use your profile picture, based on your Likes and Facebook Places check-ins, without asking you.

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