If you read any tech publication this week, you couldn’t have helped but encounter the brouhaha over Facebook’s revised Terms of Use. Now, Facebook has decided to return to its previous Terms – dated September 23, 2008 – until it can better determine how to proceed. To help ensure they don’t make the same mistakes again, they’ve also started the “Facebook Bill of Rights,” a Facebook group formed specifically to allow people “to give input and suggestions on Facebook’s Terms of Use.”
We had seen rumblings of concern over the Facebook Terms of Use as early as February 9, but it wasn’t until The Consumerist posted “We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever” that the deluge of criticism broke free. More than 6,000 diggs and hundreds of blog posts later, and suddenly Facebook was the target of a Federal complaint.
While there remains an ongoing debate about how overbearing the terms legally were, Facebook has decided to revert back to its previous terms, according to a post by Mark Zuckerberg:
“A couple of weeks ago, we revised our terms of use hoping to clarify some parts for our users. Over the past couple of days, we received a lot of questions and comments about the changes and what they mean for people and their information. Based on this feedback, we have decided to return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.”
Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Who knows? One thing is for sure: we’ll be keeping an eye on the Facebook Bill of Rights and Terms of Use page for the next chapter in this ongoing saga.
