Your intention was to share a snapshot of hilarity or to show off your great photography skills, but what you didn’t intend was Facebook co-owning the material that you uploaded.
In the Terms & Conditions, Facebook states that using the site means you agree that the company can use your material for commercial, royalty-free purposes.
It explicitly says that per intellectual property rights, users own their photos and videos but you give permission to “grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content (photos and videos) that you post on or in connection with Facebook.”
It does stipulate, however, that once the account is deleted, so does the sublicense agreement. But if others shared your content and they never deleted it, the agreed contract remains.
So the next time you want to share something with others, think about what and whom that sharing includes.
This article appears in May 20-26, 2010.