Two weeks ago, Facebook quietly revised its terms of service to provide that users granted the company a perpetual license to use the material they uploaded. The blog Consumerist
noted the change over the weekend, spurring users to complain that
Facebook was attempting to violate their privacy.
This week, the site was forced to revert to its previous terms of service and is now creating a "bill of rights and
responsibilities" for users.
"You own your information. Facebook does not. This includes your photos and all other content," states the working draft.
Unfortunately, statements like this one, however well-meaning, just add to the confusion. How does
anyone "own" information? Facebook users might own the copyright to photos they took, or to wall posts they wrote, but that's not the same as owning the information itself. Once users
publish something on a publicly accessible Web site, it's simply not private any more.
On the other hand, people have every reason to expect that online activities that they don't
voluntarily publicize -- such as their searches, emails, Web browsing histories, e-commerce activity -- will be kept confidential. That's why behavioral targeting, or serving ads to people based
on Web activity, is so controversial. That's also why Facebook's Beacon program, which shared information about members' purchases with their friends, was such a debacle.
Facebook still has to address legitimate privacy questions, including the circumstances under which marketers should serve ads to people based on data the site has collected. But this week's
discussion about "ownership" of information that users have voluntarily publicized only serves as a distraction from the much harder privacy questions.