Facebook and the Law

In this post we discuss the important rights (or lack of rights) of Facebook users and non Facebook users.

Statement of Rights and Responsibilities

1. Your Account

Once you have created an account on Facebook, it is stuck their permanently. You have the option to deactivate your account, which only removes it from view from your friends and the public, not from the Facebook servers. This means that any information that you disclose on Facebook (pictures, posts, comments, likes or even your whole chat history – yes they do keep that to), is stored on the Facebook servers permanently. Facebook retain the right to store your information forever. 

           

2. Privacy – your rights to your information

Anything you post, add or contribute to Facebook, is legally theirs. All information you disclose to Facebook (comments, pictures, notes, anything) becomes the property of Facebook. They legally own it. This means that you have no exclusive right to any material you disclose on or to Facebook, and Facebook do not need to consult you on the release, publication or distribution of such information as they own it.

3. Right to protection of privacy

If your profile gets hacked, account or information stolen, its not Facebook’s fault, and they will not be held responsible or accountable. Facebook does not guarantee that any information/data that is stored on Facebook will never be released “information may become publicly available”. Anything on Facebook is the property of Facebook, to which they can do as they please!

4. Third Party Applications

When you install an “app” on your profile, whether it is a quiz or a game, that application, and the person/s that created it, gains access to your profile. Facebook is not responsible for personal information disclosed to these applications, or what they do with that information. Facebook doesn’t screen applications for what the information is being collected or used for. So if your information is stolen or used maliciously, your problem is with the application manager, not Facebook. A BBC TV program called Click, in 2008 demonstrated the power of application information “harvesting”, when they “harvested” thousands of peoples personal information (name, birth, email, photos, all posts etc) of people who added the application. So it’s your onus to protect your information from these applications. 

5. Interesting rights and responsibilities

If you would like to sue Facebook, or have the police investigate your personal information that may have been stolen, you need to travel to California in the US and get a US court order, which would allow an investigation to take place (that is if Facebook doesn’t assist you with your requests).

If you are a convicted sex offender, you can’t have a Facebook profile or use Facebook (however Facebook still retains the right to own and store your profile and information, and disclose it to anyone, as they own it)

And in Victoria, you can be served legal documents and judgements through Facebook if you fail to turn up to court. (Dec. 15^th 2008. A judgement against the defendant, which included a six figure sum of money, was served to him through his lawyers on Facebook because he failed to show up to court and could not be located).

Changes to Facebook and your privacy

Recently the Canadian government took Facebook to court, and threatened to block the site unless it changed its privacy policy to coincide more effectively with Canadian privacy laws. These changes will hopefully be applicable within Australia.

1. Deletion of Account – When deactivating your account, you will have the option to delete your account. All information collected by Facebook will be deleted permanently, however any other information collected by third party apps will be theirs (or very difficult to retrieve or delete). Also, when you die, your account can be deleted upon your behalf.
2. Privacy and Third Party Applications – when selecting an application, instead of having to give the application full access to your profile and information, you will be able to select the exact information that will be available (ie, can’t access photos, wall posts, personal info etc).
3. Non Users get Facebook Rights! -  If you are one of the few people that doesn’t have Facebook, you now have Facebook rights! (it’s something to celebrate) If you are tagged in a photo, have your email or information that is collected by Facebook, you will be notified by Facebook of the information that has been collected. That information can’t be disclosed ever! It is Facebook’s responsibility to protect your information, which means your information is more secure than a Facebook user’s vast digital footprint!

However, you can’t have that information deleted, unless you sign up to a Facebook account, and request to have it deleted (through the newly created option of deleting your account). The joys of digital bureaucracy.  

How you can change Facebook!

As a user of Facebook, you now have the power to change Facebook’s rights and terms of use. However this process is fickle and holier than Swiss cheese.

When Facebook now makes a change, it has the discretion to open up the idea/proposal to user comments. This means that you can comment on the proposal. (However they do have the discretion not to open the idea/proposal to comments, thus circumventing the following democratic process) If more than 7000 users comment on the proposal, Facebook creates a poll (ie. change rights to x, keep as y or we need a z solution) to which the result will be legally binding if 30% or more of all Facebook user participate in the poll. That requires 6 million people to participate in the poll. This is the best avenue thus far where we can create change within the realms of Facebook.

Head to www.facebook.com/fbsitegovernance in order for you to have your say and see the changes that are occurring on Facebook, and to stand up for your rights.

We are living in the age of revolutionary communication and information change. We need to define, question and articulate what we want, as we are increasingly being given the ability to do so. And if we aren’t, we need to stand up and gain such ability. Our rights in this evolving digital age are increasingly being questioned, and to participate in such discussion and formation of law is critical, if not a moral duty. So while Facebook is a driving force of social change, we need to be the driving change behind this revolutionary digital mechanism.