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September 9, 2013 — Richard Harrington

Facebook Changes Terms of Service — Photographers Be Wary!

I am a member of ASMP (the American Society of Media Photographers).  They recently sent a useful update about a change to Facebook’s Terms of Service.  The use of social media is always a balance between effective promotion and sacrificing your rights as an image maker.
ASMP advises strongly evaluating the new changes:

The new Facebook Terms of Use have been modified to allow the company to sell virtually anything that is uploaded to the service, including all your photos, your identity and your data. Facebook has also explicitly removed the privacy protection from the commercialization rights. This means that any photos uploaded to Facebook may be sold, distributed or otherwise commercialized with no compensation to the photographer.

Here’s a summary of the changes that ASMP has tracked. Here’s the most important language. (Strikethrough indicates language that is being removed. Bold text is used to indicate the new additions.)
You can use your privacy settings to limit how your name and profile picture may be associated with commercial, sponsored, or related content (such as a brand you like) served or enhanced by us. You give us permission to use your name, and profile picture, content, and information in connection with commercial, sponsored, or related that content (such as a brand you like) served or enhanced by us, subject to the limits you place. This means, for example, that you permit a business or other entity to pay us to display your name and/or profile picture with your content or information, without any compensation to you. If you have selected a specific audience for your content or information, we will respect your choice when we use it.
 UMM… WOW!
If you wish to provide feedback to the company, you can contact them here.
ASMP says it will continue to pressure Facebook to modify the terms of use to be more favorable to photographers.
Click here to go to a Q&A on this subject.