Not cool Facebook. Not cool at all.

UPDATE: Apparently ya'll made some serious noise as Facebook has retracted their TOS change and returned to their old TOS until they could address the concerns people have raised about the wording.  I first heard about it on Twitter this morning, then Kat posted in the comments what they sent her.  Also found this over at CNET.  Way to go, guys.  And, honestly, it's nice to see a company actually, you know, listen.  Congress could learn a lot from them.

Yeah, I never bothered with getting a Facebook page.  Or MySpace.  Ya'll are lucky I even have a Twitter account.  My thing was a) I have a hard enough time keeping up with my blogs, and b) the only reason I have for getting either account would be because Everyone Else Is Doing It.

Didn't Mom used to say something like, "If your friends jumped off a bridge, does that mean you have to do it, too?"

People should listen to Mom more often.

When I started the original Kumquat, it was a means to vent my frustrations about the Bush administration.  Yes, originally, it was a political blog.  And, yes, it was a friend who told me about blogging.  It sounded a lot like LiveJournal at first, of which I had used for a brief time but really wasn't impressed.  (LiveJournal was one of those Everyone Is Doing It moments.)  I liked the blogs. They could be pretty much anything you wanted.  While some could argue that LiveJournal is pretty much a blogging program, it always seemed to me that it was slightly different.  When I was on LiveJournal, people were pretty much treating it like that,  a journal.  Something you lock and hide under a virtual mattress to keep your little brother from reading it.  With a blog, well, it was anything goes.  I like blogging.  I think blogs are very cathartic to a lot of folks, but more than anything, I have seen amazing art and writing come from blogs.

Now, maybe I'm not getting the whole MySpace/Facebook thing, but I'm pretty sure they are a result from a desire from the populace for a different kind of social networking.  With both of them, nintey percent of the time when I hear someone talking about them it's something along the lines of "Oh my God! So-and-so suddenly emailed me!  I haven't seen her since high school! She found me on MySpace/Facebook!"  And, you know, that's great if you want to be found by so-and-so from high school.  Me?  Yeah, not so much.  (Remember, I'm a geek girl.  Geek girls don't receive any more respect in high school than geek boys.)

An old college friend told me she has her MySpace page because it's an easy way to share photographs, something she's trying to do professionally.  See, that seems more like a viable reason to get a MySpace page.  MySpace is The Place you want to be if you're trying to get discovered.  Mostly if you're a musician or band.  You can find a lot of great music and art on MySpace.  Okay, that I can see.

But, guys, ya'll better check their Terms Of Service and make sure you get to keep your music, art, photos...

You see, Facebook has implemented a rather nasty change to their TOS that pretty much says anything you post there they own.  Forever.  Even if you cancel your account.

Nice, huh?

The Consumerist has an article on it.

Now, anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later. Want to close your account? Good for you, but Facebook still has the right to do whatever it wants with your old content. They can even sublicense it if they want.

That's right.  They have happily adjusted their TOS to the nastiest snatch-and-grab I've ever seen.  With Facebook, it's like your little brother wanting your cupcake and you telling him no and he licking it and declaring it his now because you don't want his cooties.  Well, Facebook has slobbered all over your accounts, people, and so it's now all theirs.  To be used any way they see fit.

This is wring-your-hands-and-cackle nefarious here.  Seriously. The hubby has a facebook account, but the only reason he originally signed on was because there was a picture he wanted to see.  That's some underhanded work right there.  "Yes, kiddies, we know you want to see those funny pictures, but first you have to register with us...and SIGN AWAY YOUR SOUL!"

I'm hoping they'll get enough flack for this they'll change their TOS, but until so noise starts happening with the Facebook users, ya'll need to take advice from The Consumerist:

Make sure you never upload anything you don't feel comfortable giving away forever, because it's Facebook's now.

Oh, you also agree to arbitration, naturally. Have fun with that.

Yeah.  If you have a Facebook page, I highly suggest you start organizing folks to fight this because I have a feeling a whole lot of people are about to lose rights to stuff they posted thinking, that like blogging, their stuff was safe.

Sometimes the attempt at bullying these sites practice remind me a lot of high school...

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You know, I'm just as guilty as anyone else for not checking TOS because most of the time they are standard because it's something for a game or an OS, the same wordage we're used to seeing.  There is almost a comfort in those TOSs.  It seemed easy to avoid the suspect ones.  The ones that popped up on random sites or places I had never really knew anything about.  Those, I didn't bother and moved on.  But, here we have a big one.  A big guy we trusted to have that same old comforting TOS we can just click through and not worry over.  Now, they are effectively using their TOS to steal stuff from us.  How nice is that?  Make some noise, folks.  Make some noise.