• BBC News, Thursday, February 19, 2009 11:30 AM

Consumer privacy watchdog the Electronic Privacy Information Center claims that the recent uproar over Facebook changing its terms of service highlights the need for a privacy law. According to the BBC, the new terms, which have since been rescinded, "seemingly gave Facebook vast control over users' content." Epic President Marc Rotenberg agreed. "This row underlines the need for comprehensive privacy laws," he said. "It is great that Facebook has responded by going back to its old terms of service. That is a step in the right direction, but these issues don't go away.

Before CEO Mark Zuckerberg pulled the plug on the new terms, Epic and 12 other consumer and civil liberty groups, were preparing to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission about the policy changes. "We said that if they would agree to (go back to their original terms of service), we wouldn't see the need to file the complaint," said Rotenberg.

In deciding to revert back to the old terms of service, Zuckerberg, in a blog post to users, said that the new terms would be drawn up with the help of Facebook's users. As such, the company has created a special group called "Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" to let users have their say. Within a few hours of its creation, the group had more than 55,000 users.

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