Facebook users fall for copyright hoax – again
A hoax has been circulating on Facebook Inc. recently claiming that posting a legal disclaimer to your Facebook wall will protect your information from “commercial use” unless written consent is given.
The disclaimer uses complicated legalese to sound official. One example states: “The content of my profile contains private information. The violation of my privacy is punishable by law (UCC 1-308 1-308 1-103 and the Rome Statute).”
For those who do not know, the Rome Statute is used by the International Criminal Court to try war criminals, not people who use Facebook users’ pictures of food without permission.
The truth is, as long as your privacy settings allow the information to be shown and you agreed to Facebook’s terms (which is required when creating an account), then the company is under no obligation to protect your content.
Facebook’s terms say:
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)
The hoax comes just ahead of a new privacy policy going into effect on Facebook next month, and it is not the first time a hoax like this has popped up over privacy concerns. A similar hoax circulated in 2012, also preying on people’s privacy fears.
Is it possible to protect content and share it?
What Facebook’s terms mean is that the information you share is as publicly available as you allow it to be. No one is forced to create a Facebook account, and no one is forced to share information with it.
But that does not mean that you do not own the content you post. Original works posted in a public place are still protected by copyright laws, but Facebook’s terms make it clear that it is not responsible for the ways others use the information you post.
The best way to share professional content on social media is to share a link to it rather than posting it directly to the site. For example, you can link to your professional photography website instead of posting a photo.
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