the digital haze.

Image via Wikipedia

wednesday morning i logged onto facebook and was immmediately presented with a message about how the site was returning to its original terms of use because its recent revision was causing such an uproar with users.

i'll be honest, i didn't even know they had revised the dang thing. realizing this, and the fact that i had no idea what facebook's policy was involving what they could do with my image/information, i decided to probe further.

first of all, i was surprised to find out that if you are under 18 and not enrolled in high school or college, you are violating the terms of use! who'dda thunk it?

also, i chuckled at the rule about not creating false representations and impersonating other people. i tested this out by searching for lauren conrad (of laguna beach and the hills fame) and promptly received 10 different people with "lauren conrad" profiles within the first few pages.

"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, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof..."

i must admit, the above statement is a little frightening. not enough so to prevent me from using the site, but knowing that a company has every right to use photos of my friends and i to advertise without notice is a little disconcerting.

"we do not screen or approve Developers". yep, that's what they said. basically, all of those nifty applications you add are totally unregulated. scary stuff.

"When we are notified that a user has died, we will generally, but are not obligated to, keep the user's account active under a special memorialized status for a period of time determined by us to allow other users to post and view comments." what i'd like to know is who gets to determine the appropriate amount of time to memorialize someone who has died? i feel like this is probably outside of the scope of a social networking site.

after reviewing facebook's terms of use and their policies on privacy and things of that nature, i've realized that it's really worthwhile to read these documents before getting involved. i know that it's a big pain and most of us just don't want to take the time to filter through seemingly useless information, but it may just be worth it to see how much of your "virtual rights" you're surrendering.

keep that in mind the next time you blindly click the "i have read and agree to..." button.