Facebook Shares fall and worse to come on the 16th. But do you know, they can use your photos if they wish? For free?

 

Facebook share price closed Friday at just under 22 usd, losing about half its market value since May (currently 47 billion valuation usd down from 104 billion).

It has been lower at 19.82 usd and it has been a lot higher, at 45 usd.

Far more worrying and what's not really well-known, is that there are a lot more shares to come onto the market, starting this week. Three pre-IPO Facebook shareholders will be "unlocked" and can trade their 6 billion usd (yes, 6 billion) worth of shares. 

It's the end of the first "lock in" period on August 16th and it's hard to see it doing anything except add further downward pressure on a share that's been besieged since May.

Over the next 4 months, 2 billion of Facebook shares (about 70% of their outstanding shares) will become saleable.They will also have to face a tax bill of up to 4 billion usd in the next few months for witholding tax.

Unlike what many expected (yours truly included), this has been a disastrous time for Facebook. Share price imploding, publicity about "fake" Facebook accounts, NASDAQ getting sued by disgruntled brokers, automated bots running on Facebook's PPC (pay per click) advertising, Twitter withdrawing from Facebook's Instagram...it goes on and on. The Facebook search function remains truly appalling by the way.

Facebook is beginning to look vulnerable and a lot of people who were hurt through losing money, have their claws out for them. This will continue to reflect itself in share price pressure. So I would expect serious damage coming soon from the markets.

However one worrying story that I picked up on Friday, and which seems to be doing the rounds, which I believe is not well known (although I'm told it is) is the photo posting permissions.

In other words, when you post a photo to Facebook, that photo belongs to Facebook to use at will. Here's what Facebook conditions say;

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 sub license) 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 authorise sub licenses of the foregoing.

Or as an online Solicitor translates as;

In plain English, this means you’re giving up copyright control of your material. If you upload a photo to Facebook, they can sell copies of it without paying you a cent. If you write lengthy notes (or import your blog posts!), Facebook can turn them into a book, sell a million copies, and pay you nothing. This deserves careful consideration!

On legal site mycounsel.com;

You may be shocked to find out that once you post on these sites, that although you still “own” the photograph, you grant the social media sites a license to use your photograph any way they see fit for free AND you grant them the right to let others use your picture as well! This means that not only can Twitter, Twitpic and Facebook make money from the photograph or video (otherwise, a copyright violation), but these sites are making commercial gain by licensing these images, which contains the likeness of the person in the photo or video (otherwise, a violation of their “rights of publicity”).

Facebook

Under Facebook’s current terms (which can change at anytime), by posting your pictures and videos, you grant Facebook “a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any [IP] content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (“IP License”). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.”  Beware of the words “transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license.”  This means that Facebook can license your content to others for free without obtaining any other approval from you!  You should be aware that once your photos or videos are shared on Facebook, it could be impossible to delete them from Facebook, even if you delete the content or cancel your account (the content still remains on Facebook servers and they can keep backups)!  So, although you may be able to withdraw your consent to the use of photos on Facebook, you should also keep in mind that if you share your photos and videos with Facebook applications, those applications may have their own terms and conditions of how they use your creation!  You should read the fine print to make sure you are not agreeing to something that you don’t want to have happen.

So let's just say you're out for a night and meet a celebrity and take a pic, then post it (as you do). It seems they can use that. Or you're at The Zoo and take a picture of a three humped camel. They can use that. Or on holidays you shoot The Eiffel Tower? They can use that.

It looks like they can use any or all of your photos at will. Say for advertising (given that it's an industry that buys a lot of library photos) you see your baby daughter in an Ad without your permission. Happy?

Ad Agencies spend their lives searching for pics such as these as does every media organisation in the world and every corporate to illustrate brochures, annual reports, websites etc. What Facebook has done is to build the biggest picture library in the world using your pics - and you don't know it.

So your pics can now be used in advertising material and there's nothing you can do about it. Or so it would seem.

By the way, I looked at Twitters T&C's and they look the same to me....

Shocking?

Outrageous?

Facebook needs to clarify this position as the Social Media comments increases.
And soon.