To share or not to share; that is the question

It’s well known that anything you post to Facebook becomes the property of Facebook. That means all the photos, videos and mp3s you post to Facebook belong to them as long as they reside on the site. Since every item posted to the mega site gets duplicated on multiple servers, deleting your content from the site can take as long as four months. 

This week, PhotoFocus took a look at Twitter’s Terms of Service (TOS). Not surprisingly, Twitter gives itself a lot of leeway when it comes to content that people post on their site. In their TOS, they explicitly state, “By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).”

Shocking!!!!

On top of that they also go on to explain, “You agree that this license includes the right for Twitter to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Twitter for the syndication, broadcast, distribution or publication of such Content on other media and services, subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use.”

This isn’t too far off from Facebook’s TOS, which states, with regard to photos, “…you understand that we may use them without any obligation to compensate you for them (just as you have no obligation to offer them).” 

In a nutshell, every time you post a photo, video or mp3 on Twitter, you give them the rights to use that content for their own means.

In our rush to share all content with everyone the second the we have a thought, photo or video, we fail to  realize the larger implications. For most of us, sharing the photo of the giant burrito you’re about to eat at Chipotle won’t have any ramifications other than questionable dietary concerns and possible indigestion. For professionals who are sharing their content through social networks however, it can mean the loss of selling “exclusive rights” to your material, and that can be real money. Once you publish a photo on Twitter, you’ve agreed to let the company use your material as it sees fit. Twitter and other social sites aren’t doing this to spite their  users, but are doing what they must to to cover themselves legally. 

It’s goes back to the old adage , “just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should.” 

If you are a company or individual that makes a living from selling your content, the simple rule is don’t post your original content on social networks. That doesn’t mean you can’t share your creations. Instead, simply post a link to your wholly owned website. You can still expose yourself to a larger audience without losing exclusivity rights.  

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.

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