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Facebook – Illustrators “ be -a –ware”

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Facebook - Illustrators “ be -a –ware”

Writ­ten by Anna Goodson…

By now, most of us have heard of or received an email from a “friend” on Face­book. And in order to read email we have had to sign up. Yours truly included.

Like every­one else I had no idea what this web­site was all about but after a few min­utes, I was curi­ous and intrigued. I was also cau­tious, so before log­ging out, I decided to take off my photo and remove my name and email address.

Two days later I get another email from yet another “friend” from Face­book and have to sign up all over again to read the email. Of course I do, because the curi­ous crea­ture that I am and that most of us are, I wanted to know who had writ­ten to me.

And this is how my love hate rela­tion­ship with Face­book began. Before I knew it, I was get­ting emails from “friends” almost on a daily basis. I was even get­ting mailed from people I didn’t even know, who claimed to be my “friend”. This was worse then being hit on it a bar from the person asking me if we went to high school together.

So I would delete. Then log out to only come back later in the day to see which “friend” had writ­ten me this time. I was never really inter­ested in post­ing too much per­sonal infor­ma­tion nor did I think anyone out there would really be that inter­ested if I was work­ing from home in my pj’s or if I was out in some trendy bar typing on my Black­Berry. So I kept the details and per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion short and sweet. I am not much of an exhi­bi­tion­ist to say the least, so I never posted any other photos of my family or myself. Little did I know that I was the exception?

On the other hand, I was receiv­ing all kinds of mes­sages, pic­tures and post­ings telling me that there where things posted on my “wall”. I also had to down­load soft wear to access some of these more com­pli­cated and coded messages.

To my sur­prise, I real­ized that there were an awful lot of people out there that did not seem to have much to do in their spare time. I mean to put together a vir­tual aquar­ium and select the fish one by one. I also got tons of photos, videos and asked to vote on some­thing or another. There were those that got a little more per­sonal with ques­tions about com­pat­i­bil­ity. And of course, I would get an end­less update of all the oh so impor­tant things my so called “friends” had just uploaded that I absolutely had to see or else…

Back to my pro­file, I posted my name and a fairly old black and white photo of me that I took from my web­site that badly needs updating.

Did not men­tion if I was mar­ried or single or how I knew the other people that were listed as my “friends”. I mean who cares.

I like to keep my pri­vate life pri­vate since my public/working per­sona is already quite well known in the indus­try that I am in.

I also failed to men­tion that accord­ing to goggle or some other search engine site I am con­sid­ered a looser to be on Face­book in the first place, since I am over 40 even if its only by a little bit, I am still over.

Back to why I am writ­ing this. Often what I do in my day-to-day work­ing life is read con­tracts, so it was only nat­ural for me to even­tu­ally get­ting around to read­ing the terms of Face­book. I am not sure how many people actu­ally do read the terms or even care for that matter, but I do and did.

I think that every­one really should take the time to read them. They need to under­stand that any­thing they post on Face­book can be used by Face­book and re sold to a third party. This is very impor­tant, par­tic­u­larly artists who are sen­si­tive to their copy rights.

Under the terms of Facebook,

User Con­tent Posted on the Site

“When you post User Con­tent to the Site, you autho­rize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem nec­es­sary in order to facil­i­tate the post­ing and stor­age of the User Con­tent on the Site. 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, to pre­pare deriv­a­tive works of, or incor­po­rate into other works, such User Con­tent, and to grant and autho­rize sub­li­censes of the fore­go­ing. You may remove your User Con­tent from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Con­tent, the license granted above will auto­mat­i­cally expire, how­ever you acknowl­edge that the Com­pany may retain archived copies of your User Con­tent. Face­book does not assert any own­er­ship over your User Con­tent; rather, as between us and you, sub­ject to the rights granted to us in these Terms, you retain full own­er­ship of all of your User Con­tent and any intel­lec­tual prop­erty rights or other pro­pri­etary rights asso­ci­ated with your User Content.

So that said, basi­cally any­thing that is posted on Face­book can be used or sold by them to anyone. Yes, you do retain full own­er­ship but you auto­mat­i­cally grant the usage over to them.

I just felt it was impor­tant to bring this to everyone’s atten­tion. As long as you know and are prop­erly informed then you can decide what to post or not.

Did you really think that Face­book was designed to bring people closer together or just for fun.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it is a great web­site and fun to track down old friends and acquain­tances if you have noth­ing better to do. It’s always nice to hear from some­one you dated back in high school or is it?

More often than not, people sign up for web­sites and post all kinds of images and photos with­out read­ing the fine print. It’s best to be aware of the terms and con­di­tions of a web­site, before you sign up.

You never know where you images could pop up with­out you even know­ing they are there.

- Anna Goodson

Anna Good­son is pres­i­dent of Anna Good­son Man­age­ment; an inno­v­a­tive, boutique-​style agency serv­ing the global mar­ket­ing needs of the visual arts com­mu­nity. Draw­ing on a proven track record of vision, insight and inge­nu­ity, AGM rep­re­sents some of the most cel­e­brated illus­tra­tors from around the world.

Visit – Agood​son.com | LCS Interview

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9 Pings to “Facebook – Illustrators “ be -a –ware””

  1. Lundentoons Blog- Writer, cartoonist and illustrator Einar Lunden » Facebook and Copyrights Says:
    December 5th, 2007 at 2:17 am

    [...] Here’s a link to the full arti­cle about. [...]

  2. gee, that’s swell! » The Fine Print... Says:
    December 6th, 2007 at 6:44 pm

    [...] on Facebook…Check out the arti­cle regard­ing the rights to your work if you post it, here….You still own them, but you’re grant­ing them full rights to them to do what­ever they [...]

  3. milkjar sketch blog » Great article to share! Says:
    December 7th, 2007 at 2:42 am

    [...] Face­book – illus­tra­tors "be – a -ware"http://thelittlechimpsociety.com/theape/facebook-illustrators-be-a-ware/ [...]

  4. » Facebook - Illustrators “ be -a –ware” | littlechimpsociety Aggregate Mad Blog: aggregates the interwebs Says:
    December 7th, 2007 at 7:37 pm

    [...] http://​the​lit​tlechimp​so​ci​ety.​com/​t​h​e​a​p​e​/​f​a​c​e​b​o​o​k​-​i​l​l​u​s​t​r​a​t​o​r​s​-​b​e​-​a​-ware/ … basi­cally any­thing that is posted on Face­book can be used or sold by them to anyone. Yes, you do retain full own­er­ship but you auto­mat­i­cally grant the usage over to them. [...]

  5. Bomb Squad Industries » Blog Archive » » Facebook and copyright Says:
    December 8th, 2007 at 1:31 am

    [...] the whole arti­cle by Artist rep Anna Good­son here, well worth a read. addthis_​url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bombsquadindustries.com%2F%3Fp%3D208′; [...]

  6. Marc Moss’ yummy del.icio.us bookmarks for December 15th | Marc Makes Art Says:
    December 16th, 2007 at 6:17 am

    [...] Face­book – Illus­tra­tors beware :: Illus­tra­tion – So that said, basi­cally any­thing that is posted on Face­book can be used or sold by them to anyone. Yes, you do retain full own­er­ship but you auto­mat­i­cally grant the usage over to them. I just felt it was impor­tant to bring this to everyone�s atten­tion. [...]

  7. DaniDraws.com » Artists Beware of PhotoBucket Says:
    January 17th, 2008 at 10:01 am

    [...] about Face­book that was made by artist agent Anna Good­son some time ago. Read about it here: http://​the​lit​tlechimp​so​ci​ety.​com/​t​h​e​a​p​e​/​f​a​c​e​b​o​o​k​-​i​l​l​u​s​t​r​a​t​o​r​s​-​b​e​-​a​-ware/.) Nev­er­the­less, web ser­vices like these can be really help­ful, and it would be nice if Pho­to­Bucket [...]

  8. Why I do not post my work on Facebook, Myspace, and other online social websites - and why you shouldn’t either « Katy Osterwald Says:
    October 21st, 2008 at 4:34 pm

    [...] http://​the​lit​tlechimp​so​ci​ety.​com/​t​h​e​a​p​e​/​f​a​c​e​b​o​o​k​-​i​l​l​u​s​t​r​a​t​o​r​s​-​b​e​-​a​-ware/ [...]

  9. Design Ronin: Sustainable business through design Says:
    January 15th, 2009 at 4:17 am

    [...] the whole arti­cle by Artist rep Anna Good­son here, well worth a [...]


4 Responses to “Facebook – Illustrators “ be -a –ware””

  1. 1. Michael Grills Says:
    December 4th, 2007 at 5:18 pm

    Anna,

    Thanks for point­ing this out to Our Com­mu­nity. I used to be on face­book as well but attempted to close my account once I saw the License agree­ment. I try to warn people as well.

  2. 2. Eben Says:
    December 6th, 2007 at 6:07 pm

    i am curi­ous if this includes imported blogs. con­ceiv­ably, one could import a sketch­blog, and have those images placed under this agree­ment (note: i have since stopped import­ing my sketch­blog in face­book, and deleted those entries).

  3. 3. luclatulippe Says:
    December 10th, 2007 at 1:21 am

    I agree heartily: We should always read the ToS (Terms of Ser­vice) when­ever we sign up to use ANY­thing. Or, for that matter, when­ever we enter into any new ven­tures, par­tic­u­larly those related to work.

    I know of a number of artists whose reps blindly signed unfair con­tracts for them, or who accepted jobs on the artists’ behalf with­out ever seeing (let alone sign­ing) any agree­ments what­so­ever. I know of some artists who were chas­tised by their reps when they deigned to ASK to see a con­tract before accept­ing to do a job. I know some artists who were prac­ti­cally threat­ened by their reps for not want­ing to spend more money on pro­mo­tions, when in fact those artists did not have enough money to spare for rent, let alone promos.

    We artists should always be espe­cially aware of what we are get­ting into, how we dis­sem­i­nate our work, and who we allow to have con­trol over our work. This is some­thing I’ve writ­ten about often and in depth on my own blog, and a theme I bear in mind when find­ing arti­cles to post at Drawn.ca. Sadly, it’s our per­fectly normal yet naive nature as artists to usu­ally be more inter­ested in immers­ing our­selves in our art, than in legal doc­u­ments and busi­ness deal­ings related to our field. This gentle yet common flaw most of us have is one that causes us to be taken advan­tage of by oppor­tunists of all stripes.

    This fear-​based, knee-​jerk reac­tion which Anna dis­plays above reminds me of the over-​blown sus­pi­cious­ness that per­me­ated the net over a decade ago: Artists every­where pan­icked, believ­ing that every­one would steal their work if they uploaded it online!

    Turns out that never hap­pened nearly to the fear­ful degree we thought it would. Besides, even with­out the inter­net, people steal images all the time. Check out the blog called “You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice” for daily find­ings of which com­pany is steal­ing from which artist. Or which artist is steal­ing from some­one else. Yeah, we ain’t all saints either.

    While there’s some good advice in what Anna cau­tions above, it’s being served up with a healthy dose of para­noia. Seri­ously, what do we think Face­book wants with all the photos that we upload to our pro­files? Yes, some illus­tra­tors may upload a few sam­ples of their work there (which I agree is not smart), but, by and large, it’s not what people use it for. It’s not the graph­ics that Face­book wants. (Pho­tog­ra­phers already shot them­selves in that revenue-​generating foot over the past decade by sell­ing tons of their work to stock photo agen­cies, thereby com­pet­ing against them­selves in their own market.)

    What is Face­book? It depends if your a user or if you run the com­pany.

    For users of Face­book (or MySpace, or Friend­ster, or what­ever), the site is essen­tially: A) a way of con­nect­ing with new and old friends; B) a point­less diver­sion; and C) a repos­i­tory for lots and lots of poorly framed, self-​shot, low-​res, phone-​cam pro­file photos. No offense to anyone, mine aren’t all that hot either.

    I per­son­ally doubt Face­book has any inter­est in stock-​piling mas­sive amounts of drunken col­lege party pics. Think of all the fair-to-mediocre visual con­tent that you see there already. What value do you think it has?

    Facebook’s “evil” busi­ness plan is the same as every­one else’s these days: to gen­er­ate obscene amounts of rev­enue by way of user-​generated con­tent. This is why the want to “own” the junk we upload there — not to men­tion the per­sonal infor­ma­tion we pass onto them, such as our age, sex, loca­tion, likes and dis­likes, sim­i­lar friends, net­works, etc… — so that they can sell this data to third par­ties who then gen­er­ate “personalized” ads for us to see when­ever we log in. Their new model, intro­duced recently and highly crit­i­cized in tech cir­cles, is a form of tar­geted adver­tis­ing sim­i­lar to (but per­haps much more intru­sive than) Google’s ads.

    Face­book is not, as Anna is per­haps sug­gest­ing above, think­ing about steal­ing your art­work. They just want to sell you more crap.

    C’est tout.

  4. 4. 2000male Says:
    December 11th, 2007 at 2:33 am

    Take it easy. Anyone and every­one should know you own noth­ing. Get noth­ing. Should, should, should. Boot­leg, boot­leg, boot­leg. Wel­come home. Get over it. Be better than the boot­leg­ger, or boot­leg better. This isn’t summer camp. Life is short. Mix and be merry. Look at art. Show your art.

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