Facebook owns your photos

DDCSD wrote in post #7930824
A few months ago Facebook quietly changed their ToS to state that they own your photos, and own them even after they are deleted from their servers. There was a huge uproar, and they reverted back to basically the same terms as any other website that is involved in displaying photos.

And then when the uproar died down they had a "vote" which was rigged in their favor, requiring 67% of ALL accounts, active or not to reject the terms. The result is they put it up again, as I posted above. The part i posted is accurate as of 5/17/09.

DDCSD wrote in post #7930809
Here's what blogger.com's ToS says about your Intellectual Property that you post on or through their website (http://www.blogger.com​/terms.g)

Your Intellectual Property Rights. Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services. You or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any Content you submit, post or display on or through Google services and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying and distributing Google services. Google furthermore reserves the right to refuse to accept, post, display or transmit any Content in its sole discretion.

Sound familiar?

Sounds familiar, yes. Anything alike legally? No.
Google does not have a transferable clause in there, and that makes a huge difference. There is no need for a closed site like facebook to need transferable rights. Even worse, facebook also includes sub-licensing, which means that even if their original license is rejected, the sublicenses are legally valid.

It's really not that they own the photo, they "let you" keep the rights to your photo, but any that you upload they basically can do whatever they want with -- including resize, wartermark, use to promote facebook, print and use for marketing or as a greeting card -- without ever paying you anything.

It's not just them any and all social sites, including devianart uses the same TOS.

Speaking of, has anyone read Flickr's TOS lately? Maybe it's about time to re-read that too.

^^ Thanks for finding that DDCSD. It looks like EVERYONE owns my stuff already so I might as well put it on facebook!

I suppose the best way to get around this is to have your own website.

I hope I do not stir up another round of discussion. But, to own your own website is safest way to go, expensive and time consuming if do it yourself, though.

Sunny Boaz wrote in post #11842194
I hope I do not stir up another round of discussion. But, to own your own website is safest way to go, expensive and time consuming if do it yourself, though.

How is it expensive? I pay less than $7 per month for hosting and do my own web site plus, the blog is free (Wordpress).

Yes, WS maintenance takes a little time, but it's a labor of love and as the old adage goes "If you want something done right, ..."