This week, Facebook has faced severe criticism from European data protection officials, the ACLU, and prominent tech bloggers about its privacy policies. Most of what came out was unsurprising. But then I saw this: “A number of high-profile users have … deleted their Facebook accounts after the site introduced a new feature that lets non-Facebook websites, or third parties, post the personal views of Facebook users without their consent” (full BBC article here).1 Blah. Does this mean I have suddenly given up my copyright protection for material posted on Facebook without my knowledge? I don’t have the patience to read through Facebook’s constantly-changing user agreement and privacy policy to find out. At least when I post things here, on my own Web site, in the highly unlikely occurrence that someone should rip stuff off, I can feel righteously indignant about it.
1 Doesn’t this an awful lot like what happened at MySpace a couple of years ago, when they suddenly claimed they had the rights to anything posted on MySpace? Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg seem to have about the same low level of morality.