Now The Playground Own Everything You Bring In With You

Oh that cruel sign-up process where you have to fill a minimum of two to a maximum of 15 or more text fields to get yourself registered somewhere on the web. It has a small check box just above the "sign up" button, having a line of text "I agree to all the Terms and Conditions", which you have to check to complete your registration. If you don't check it, it displays a pop up or a message in red saying you must agree to the terms and conditions to complete sign up. If you do even think about clicking the link and seeing whats in it, you get haunted by the amount of text that loads up in front of you, even if someone hold their breath and starts to read, the language used in it is so hard that a person either feel ashamed that he doesn't know good English, or gets agitated and close the window.

However if you notice something that went against your will and you object about it, they'll say that you have already agreed on this before you signed up with us. They'll fish-up lines from the river of text and show it to you and you won't be able to do anything about it.

The same is with the recent change in facebook's - 3,700 words in 315 lines -Terms of Services. Updated on February 4th 2009, claims that all the content that is uploaded by any user with any set of privacy settings is now the property of Facebook and facebook has the rights to do whatever it wants to do with it (well that's in simple words).

The original text is, (I have faded-out text that will get you pulling your hair out. But if you want to read it all, be my guest!)

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

Source: Facebook Terms of Use - if you dare, read it all, if not, do check out the sections License and Termination.

You may also read more here. It apparently also highlights the fact that even if you close your account or delete the content, the content will still be kept with facebook in archived form, and can be used by facebook whenever and wherever it wants.

You may also join the facebook group "People Against the new Terms of Service (TOS)"

Good Luck to all of you who post yourself, your family, friends, loved ones, in short, your lives on facebook. Its like you went to a playground with your family, your Frisbees and your lunch and now the playground owns everything!

After all this, if you are still wondering why this is bad, take at the look at Google's Paper on Issues of Privacy on Social Web.