THE INTERNET has your information, but it also has your back. Such is the lesson learned from this week’s U-turn by social networking site Facebook, which changed its terms of use earlier this month, only to change them back this week.
The issue that led to Facebook’s loss of face related to content ownership. Up until the change in terms, Facebook could use and store data belonging to its subscribers only as long as they subscribed to the site, with its licence to do so expiring once a user deleted his/her account. With this month’s decision to “clarify” the terms of use came the deletion of this provision regarding content removal. To put it baldly, Facebook owned the photographs, posts and profile information of over 175 million users worldwide even if they decided to remove their information, and could sell this content to whomever they wished.
The good news is, they can’t any more, thanks to – well, the internet. A consumer advocacy blog, the Consumerist, tipped off by a reader, cottoned on to the fine print and news spread cyberquickly. “Make sure you never upload anything you don’t feel comfortable giving away forever, because it’s Facebook’s now,” wrote the Consumerist’s Chris Walters.
Users protested, and Facebook caved. “We have decided to return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised,” read the message from Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg, as the changes were rolled back, if only temporarily. A new version of the terms of use is currently in the pipeline, but there’s a difference this time: users get to have their input, with Facebook creating a forum within the site for subscribers to have their say.
While the whole kerfuffle has had Facebookers up in arms, it’s not the first time questions of privacy and the internet have been raised. It’s not even the only time this week. An attempt by a Pittsburgh couple to sue Google after photos of their house appeared on its Street View map programme was thrown out by the judge. In her ruling, Judge Amy Reynolds Hay wrote that, despite the couple in question claiming “mental suffering” due to the appearance of their home on the Google programme, “it is hard to believe that any – other than the most exquisitely sensitive – would suffer shame or humiliation”.
According to internet law expert Simon McGarr of McGarr solicitors, what the Facebook incident and Google case have in common is not so much privacy as permission. “Both of the cases share a question of consent,” he says. Yet there are differences. “In the case of Facebook, it was changing rules that people felt they knew . . . The change of terms became a breach of the user’s expectation.”
In the Google case, however, expectations were different. “If you walk down the street, you do expect to be able to take photographs of houses,” says McGarr. “Society has consented to have photographs taken of public buildings. If your society has already consented to it, it’s very difficult for individuals to roll back, on behalf of everyone else, that consent.”
As McGarr sees it, when it comes to the internet, it’s less about privacy laws and more about the comfort zones of those who use it. “They see it not so much in terms of what’s private, and whether their privacy rights are being violated, but whether they are comfortable with it, whether they are used to it.”
While people are used to having photographs of public places include their houses, they’re less accustomed to handing over their private photo albums. “Buildings aren’t people,” says McGarr, adding that in the Google case, such societal norms came into play. “By and large it would be the ‘exquisitely sensitive’ people who would suffer the consequences of these things , but society shouldn’t be balanced so that those people dictate how we all live.”
So who does dictate? The good news is that, when it comes to the internet, we can. “What’s a hopeful sign is that the Facebook terms of service change was noticed, and people grasped what it meant,” says McGarr, who points to the fact that other sites, like YouTube, require users to grant them a “perpetual and irrevocable” licence to reproduce, distribute and sell the content of its user submissions.
Though the thought of internet giants profiting eternally from the submissions of their users is depressing stuff, McGarr is optimistic. “The controversy over the Facebook terms of service represents in one way a hopeful step for people who advocate privacy and who would suggest that informed consent is necessary in order for consent to be genuine. And if Facebook does eventually change the terms of service back along the lines they were previously indicating, the controversy will have given all its members the option to consider wether or not they wish to accept that as the basis for sharing their information.”
Bottom line? Read the fine print, and make your choice, but if your sensitivities can be described as exquisite, Facebook may not be your friend.