Facebook’s Terms of Service

Facebook’s Terms of Service seem to occupy a lot of bloggers’ minds these days. At issue: privacy and copyright to the content you post.

On Andrew Flusche’s post “Facebook Isn’t Private,” his readers have commented that Facebook’s Terms of Service is no different from any other site.

Dave McClure also wrote an excellent (and highly entertaining without making it less serious) post on Facebook’s privacy.

I’m not going to pretend I understand legalese but a private social network seems like an oxymoron to me. But nonetheless I think conversations on these issues are great in a sense that it brings Terms of Service the attention it deserves.

My personal motto isn’t necessarily caveat emptor but I feel that all too often the Terms of Service is just a check box that users mindlessly click without looking into things like indemnity clauses. And because of this we have all these lawsuits that, under these Terms of Service, don’t really have merit (IMO) but are nonetheless costly to defend…in other words, nobody wins (ok the lawyers but that’s not to say that I hate them).