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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 - Agoodson.com | LCS Interview
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7 Pings to “Facebook - Illustrators “ be -a –ware””
4 Responses to “Facebook - Illustrators “ be -a –ware””
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1. Michael Grills Says:
December 4th, 2007 at 5:18 pmAnna,
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.
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2. Eben Says:
December 6th, 2007 at 6:07 pmi 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).
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3. luclatulippe Says:
December 10th, 2007 at 1:21 amI 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.
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4. 2000male Says:
December 11th, 2007 at 2:33 amTake 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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