Facebook Subscribers in an Uproar

UPDATE: Under pressure from subscribers, Zuckerberg backed off and reversed their policy. See his latest blog.

Facebook, combined with genealogy, has become the rage in the last year. NEARLY every blogger I know now has a Facebook account and lots of “Facebook Friends.” I say NEARLY because I know a very few who have resisted… I’m one of the few. My reason for not joining the masses is that if I add anything else to my day, I’m in fear that it will be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. I already put in too many 16 hour days… I blog – I edit magazines – I run a publishing company – I do personal genealogy – I lecture – and then I blog some more. In the spring, summer, and fall, I garden. And with what time I have left over, I try to uphold my responsibilities as a husband, father and grandfather. Sounds backwards, doesn’t it? So I’ve never become a Facebook Friend, or even a Twitterer…

You may think that it’s no big deal to spend a few moments doing your Facebook stuff – or sending and reading Tweets, and it may not be, but I already have a long list of things I must do that aren’t being done. Enough already…

So I’m one of those folks standing on the outside looking in as the Facebook subscribers realize that they don’t necessarily own all that personal information that they’re posting. It seems that Chris Walters, at the Consumerist Blog, let folks know that the fine print that Facebook subscribers are told to read and never do, now actually states that:

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

That blog started quite a fuss. The New York Times did an article, and even folks at Fox News began talking about it. The Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, responded with a blog of his own. But it looks like the fine print will stay as is.

Dick Eastman and Kimberly Powell have both written blogs about the Facebook controversy today. Where’s Randy? I expect he’ll weigh in on this soon…

Okay – Randy has had his input…