Week 4 - Tutorial Task

The social network I have chosen is Facebook.

One of the more interesting clauses in Facebook's Terms of Use is as follows:

Access Device and Browser Information. When you access Facebook from a computer, mobile phone, or other device, we may collect information from that device about your browser type, location, and IP address, as well as the pages you visit.


Simply put, if you have not completely erased your history, cookies and saved data, the Facebook system is able to not only access data about websites you have visited, on what browser, but also to retain this information.  As somebody who frequents websites such as thepiratebay.org, I find this particular clause quite worry-some.  


Another interesting clause:


For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.


Essentially this clause means that upon agreeing to the terms and conditions, the user legally signs over their right to any content that is uploaded from their profile to Facebook.  Furthermore, Facebook also has the right to sell on this intellectual property, at no gain to the user.  At the end of the clause a 'failsafe' sentence is added to make the user feel better.  However, this is almost completely null and voided by the fact that if the intellectual property in question is shared with others, and the user tries to delete it, the property is not in fact 
deleted as it is still being stored on the shared users account.


As of now, the 'Payment Terms' website is actually not available, which in itself is interesting.  




http://www.facebook.com/terms.php
http://www.facebook.com/policy.php