4 ms·

What you're pointing here, is that even a "non-evil" company can nearly be forced by the sake of self-protection and simplicity to have abusive clauses. Maybe t

by plesn 18y ago

What you're pointing here, is that even a "non-evil" company can nearly be forced by the sake of self-protection and simplicity to have abusive clauses. Maybe this shows the need of active regulation and arbitration in the domain. In France we have somthing supposed to ensure data privacy called "CNIL" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNIL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNIL ). Is there some equivalent in the US?

mechanical_fish 18y ago
I don't think we're talking about a data privacy issue here. Facebook's TOS, old and new, states that its rights to use your data are "subject to your privacy settings". The issue here is copyright, which is not the same thing. Meanwhile, if you're saying that it would be great if we had a regulatory regime that recognized the reality of the Internet -- where anything you publish effectively belongs to the world and cannot thereafter be retracted or centrally controlled -- amen to that! But that's not the world we live in. We live in a world full of lawyers who mail C&D notices to indie filmmakers if they happen to photograph a building or a sign or a person without getting a signed release first; a world where a lot of modern art can't afford to legally exist because it costs too much to clear the rights to all the components of that art. Under those circumstances, I find it hard to blame Facebook for throwing up their hands and demanding a waiver before you publish anything on their platform.
- unalone 18y ago
  That's kind of the downside to capitalism: more freedom means more people taking advantage of the system. The problem's that sometimes taking advantage leads to really cool stuff getting done. It's a mixed blessing as always.
- plesn 18y ago
  It's true I would like to live in a world which would care about people rights and privacy before copyrighted content; I know I'm pretty idealistic. But in this case it seems to me they are fighting evil with a lot bigger evil.

by plesn 18y ago

mechanical_fish 18y ago

I don't think we're talking about a data privacy issue here. Facebook's TOS, old and new, states that its rights to use your data are "subject to your privacy settings". The issue here is copyright, which is not the same thing. Meanwhile, if you're saying that it would be great if we had a regulatory regime that recognized the reality of the Internet -- where anything you publish effectively belongs to the world and cannot thereafter be retracted or centrally controlled -- amen to that! But that's not the world we live in. We live in a world full of lawyers who mail C&D notices to indie filmmakers if they happen to photograph a building or a sign or a person without getting a signed release first; a world where a lot of modern art can't afford to legally exist because it costs too much to clear the rights to all the components of that art. Under those circumstances, I find it hard to blame Facebook for throwing up their hands and demanding a waiver before you publish anything on their platform.

unalone 18y ago
That's kind of the downside to capitalism: more freedom means more people taking advantage of the system. The problem's that sometimes taking advantage leads to really cool stuff getting done. It's a mixed blessing as always.
plesn 18y ago
It's true I would like to live in a world which would care about people rights and privacy before copyrighted content; I know I'm pretty idealistic. But in this case it seems to me they are fighting evil with a lot bigger evil.