Facebook is Closed for Anything
From Mark Zuckerberg's post responding to the criticisms of their new ToS:
“We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work.”
If that's the case, then why the onerous licensing? I'm quite sure that people running email servers don't need to negotiate licenses to send and receive email to and from one another. Asymmetrical persistence is a feature, not a bug, of email.
Facebook couldn't figure out how to replicate email in a closed, centrally controlled corporate environment (hint: you can't). Resorting to legalese is a by-product of their broken closed model (yes, this includes their support of OpenID and their Facebook PlatformPlantation).
“There is no system today that enables me to share my email address with you and then simultaneously lets me control who you share it with and also lets you control what services you share it with.”
That's because you can't control such things. At the end of the day, I can write down a phone number from a screen, and paste it up on telephone poles anywhere I please, shout it out at the top of my lungs. There's no law that prevents me from doing that, and even if there were, it would be completely unenforceable.
The music and film industries have been fighting this losing battle for years, and frankly it's depressing to see a major web property co-opting the notion of openness while playing essentially the same DRM game.
With legalese like this, I'm expecting the big announcement at f8 to be OpenFacebookHappyDRM. Code name: Hotel California.
You can OpenID in any time of day, but you can never leave…
4 Comments:
Haha! Excellent!
You nailed it.
The line about e-mail jumped out at me as well.
I think it is ironic that you are taking this the exact opposite way of everyone else who is screaming at facebook. You are concerned with facebook closing off access to its information instead of being "open", while everyone else is mad at them for allowing others to access their information without allowing personal control over it.
Alex: I don't think that's true at all. I think what most people are upset about is that Facebook is claiming a perpetual license to content posted to their servers. Privacy controls are absolutely important, but I think you're missing my point.
Those privacy controls, contractual or otherwise, only work so long as the content stays wholly on Facebook's servers. Clearly that's not going to happen. For example:
Lisa Villagran said: "Okay, nobody can do a kewpie doll face as well as Amy. What a savage beast just about to ravage her."
I don't know Lisa, but she posted that comment on a photo that was posted on Facebook. I don't have an explicit license to share that content, but honestly, does it matter? Is Lisa going to ask me to take it down, or sue me if I refuse? Will she sue Facebook? Could she?
The point is that Facebook now has a perpetual license to reproduce that content, and any other content that they host, including content that has economic or personal value. Zuckerberg is right to say that they can't guarantee that the content will completely disappear after you delete your account. However, they're wrong to say that as a result they have to have a contract that gives them permission to perpetually profit off that content.
If Facebook would give up on the idea that they are the central and solitary repository for all social communication, there would be simpler, more honest ways of approaching their problem.
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