Paul drew my attention to the terms of use on Facebook:
“When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.”
A little excessive perhaps?
In their defence, these terms would be necessary to allow them licence to show your submitted content on their site. However, it’s the ‘right to sublicence’ and ‘incorporate into other works’ which really opens the gates for them to do anything you like with any of your content.
I wonder if “when you post User Content to the site” includes when their API fetches content from other sources. Does this then grant them license to reuse your Flickr photos, your Twitter tweets, and your blog posts? They can be shown on your profile even though you never manually submit the content to Facebook.
Fanboy