3 ms·

Our old friend "if it's on the Internet, it's public domain" rears its head again: "For example, if you open a Facebook account and your setting are not set to

• baddox 16y ago
  I'm not sure how the question of intellectual property protection (public domain) is relevant to factual information about yourself or another person. Intellectual property doesn't seem as applicable in this situation as does, say, privacy. Details like your religion, age, hometown, etc. wouldn't be covered by copyright, would they? Nor would they be covered by trademarks or patents or as trade secrets. Correct me if I'm wrong. As for status updates or things like favorite quotations or even favorite movie lists, I suppose I can understand them being considered original creative works which could be coverable by copyright. Of course, I'm generally against intellectual property protection as a whole, so I'm not the best judge.
  • JoachimSchipper 16y ago
    Facts are not copyrightable, but a credible profile looks more like "Hi, I'm John Doe and I live in Austin, Texas [fact]. I like foo and hate bar. I'm looking for a girl/guy to love and go on long walks with. (etc)" Such text is copyrightable.
• nodata 16y ago
  "To the older generation, privacy is about secrecy. And, as the Supreme Court said, once something is no longer secret, it's no longer private. But that's not how privacy works, and it's not how the younger generation thinks about it. Privacy is about control." -- http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/05/google-facebook-twitter-technology-security-10-privacy.html http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/05/google-facebook-twitter-tec...