Comments

1
People are pretty credulous, which is why people are easily manipulated.
2
Agreed. Facebook stuff is being used in academic integrity and other discipline issues here at NU and other universities. Students are shocked when the photos of their underage drinking on their facebook pages are used as evidence of their underage drinking.
3
Not to mention, Facebook is free. They make their money by collecting info on you.

Which reminds me, I need to post a picture of my new pole lamps.
4
Actually, as the writer, you own Copyright, and Facebook is officially put on notice that the works are yours.

Under DCMA this allows you to do a takedown.

If you lived in a real country with real country (e.g. Canada or Mexico or the EU) you have even more rights and Facebook must comply with them, no matter what their boilerplate says.

On the other hand, Facebook can hire a heck of a lot more lawyers than you can, so you're still screwed.
5
(sorry, with "real rights" not "real country" - but that would be fun ...)
6
While copyright law is pretty broad, there are a wide variety of circumstances in which writers do not own their words, and I suspect that Facebook has written their agreements to ensure that this is one of them.

But as you point out, the real issue is that FB can launch and endure a lawsuit much more easily than just about anyone.
7
It isn't just facebook. All over the internet, people think a few lines of hastily or thoughtlessly copied text will imbue them with an impenetrable legal aegis.

NOTICE: This internet cyber-board comment message is for the sole use of the intended recipient'(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies, including without limitation electronic or printed versions, of the message.
8
@4, everytime I think you've exhausted the possibilities for subjects you know nothing about but feel compelled to squirt out more completely wrong information, you surprise me. Nothing you say here is true. It's exactly opposite to true.

You don't know what copyright means. You don't know what the DMCA says, or even what it is called (not "DCMA"). You don't know anything about Canada or Mexico or the EU. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

But I'm sure you've got loads of examples of Canadians issuing DMCA takedown notices to Facebook asking them to take down content they themselves have voluntarily posted there.

Seriously, Will: how is it possible to be as stupid as you and still survive in the world?
9
Yeah, I've heard people tell me these cheesy lines plenty of times. Stuff like "Copy & paste if you agree." "You complete me." "Come with me if you want to live." "I am your father."

It just gets old.
10
It's the Sovereign Citizens bullshit over again.

NOTICE: These intertubes are the sole intellectual property of Albert Arnold Gore Jr. and Christopher Poole, and are composed entirely of cats. Any unauthorized trolling, butthurt, combos, or suckputters are prohibited and will be backtraced by the cyber police. DO THE IMPOSSIBLE SEE THE INVISIBLE ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWAH. If you cannot triforce, please contact Chris Hansen by Giga Puddi and delete System32. The balls are inert.
11
Will's stupidity never ceases to amaze me. Maybe it's only more apparent to me when he attempts to give legal advice, because that's the one thing I really do know what I'm talking about.

Yes, I've seen this a lot lately. Their terms of service and privacy policy are controlling. They can change them any time you want. You can't.

And every time you make a post, you agree to them all over again.
12
Oh shit, that reminds me. Nobody read anything I've written in Slog comments. Forget what I look like. You are not allowed to identify me for any legal purposes.
13
The one benefit to things like this is that it proves which acquaintances whose friend request you accepted even though you didn't know very well you want to hit up when you've got a bridge to sell in Brooklyn.
14
I actually thought those were all some sort of spam coming from hacked profiles, written by someone for whom English is not their first language.

In my mind, the passage (hang on...)
"If you do not post such a statement once, then you are indirectly allowing public use of items such as your photos and the information contained in your status updates.
read like a guarantee that a link to cheap boner pills or exciting top name sportswear was to follow.

I was actually disappointing to learn it's just the ramblings of a run-of-the-mill, confused American.
15
Well, I am not a lawyer, but I watch Law & Order reruns and....
16
Paul, what do your privacy settings look like? I get where you're coming from regarding the uselessness of this specific disclaimer, but are you saying Facebook account/privacy settings don't matter, period?
17
@8 Fnarf, sadly there are far dumber people surviving in this world, how else to explain the popularity of Dancing With The Stars?
18
@8 & @11 As soon as I saw the avatar, I knew we were in for a doozy on this one. DCMA Takedown sounds like a mma dj.

So it's the actual broadcast contracts and lawyers that give copyright protection to baseball games on TV, not just Bob Costas reading some boilerplate? Wow. That's shocking.
19
@17, the dimmest mouthbreather sitting in the dark watching Dancing With The Stars, clapping his or her hands out of time and murmuring "ooh ooh sparkly", comes across like a Rhodes Scholar in comparison to Will. It's harmless entertainment. Will on the other hand is like the guy in the bar bragging to the other patrons that he air-conditions his house for free by leaving the fridge door open all the time.

FB's terms are easy to find, and easy to understand: http://www.facebook.com/legal/terms . You own your content, but you agree to let them use it if you haven't specifically forbidden it (easy to do), and if you share it with other people they're going to see it. This is not rocket science, people; it's not even HVAC science. As evil goes, it's slightly less threatening than the guy who hangs pizza coupons on your front doorknob.
20
@16, I would imagine the level of "filtering" one does to your facebook feed does indeed limit what the public/your filters actually see when they go to your page. However, all of that "secret" posting you do? Still can be seen by anyone at facebook. With a proper court order (or not) law enforcement can easily get access to your stuff.
21
@19 Good stuff.

The only way to keep your privacy is by not sharing. Other than that they change their rules constantly, so essentially they own you. People need to understand: on Facebook YOU are the PRODUCT, ADVERTISERS are the CUSTOMERS. Your rights don't matter in the least to Facebook, despite any declarations they make in the press. Just look at their history of sudden policy changes, settings changes, etc, with little notice.
22
@ 20, I know this. But Paul writes:

"Facebook is public, and you should assume that everything you do on Facebook is public and that everyone—friends, family, law enforcement agencies—can see it. Full stop. The end".

It is therefore fair to ask what his privacy settings are because if he walks the walk anyone should be able to see and access anything on his profile at any time.
23
As long as the Stranger continues to be hosted off-world, Free Speech is safe.
24
People will be a lot better off once they start treating social media more like a chainsaw and less like a television. Chainsaws are very useful, and they are very dangerous. If you're going to operate one, learn how to use it and follow the safety protocols.
25
@23 Well, I agree his wording on that is a little wonky, but when has Facebooks filtering levels ever truly worked?
26
I'd donate a tide sum to see a Fnarf VS. Will In Seattle trivia battle. Man, I'd love that so much.

It could be for charity!
27
And by the way, Will, your beloved Google+ is exactly the same. Deal with it.
28
I never watch Law and Order.

But I have sat in on IP seminars for lawyers and did take Law in grade 10 and for business and military use.

The fact that you think a "warning letter" by a lawyer means you committed a crime is your problem, not mine.
29
@24 for the Analogy win.
30
@22. The smart way to use the internet is assuming that everything you do can a) be made public and b) possibly be traced back to you. Anonymous and pseudonymous comments, search histories, photos on password-protected or restricted-access sites, blog posts, all of it. Assuming that doesn't mean you have to make it easy for everyone to do those things.
31
So you sat in on IP seminars and "did take Law in grade 10". Whatever the hell that means.

A) That you would cite these events as proof of your legal prowess is some of the funniest sh*t I've seen on slog in awhile.

B) They apparently didn't do you any good, seeing as how you failed to understand one of the simplest applications of copyright law.

But thanks for the laff.
32
I used to do social work back in Baltimore and would provide assistance to people in subsidized housing projects. One of my favorite cases was this guy Stevie who'd been shot in the head during a liquor store robbery years ago. He'd spend his summer afternoons sitting on a chair in front of the fridge with both the main & freezer doors hanging wide open & a box fan (sort of) circulating the cold air. Always killed me.
33
@ 30, it behooves you (and Paul) to explain this doublethink in a bit more depth. Do you ever put things online that you hope others won't/can't see? Do you or do you not have privacy settings "protecting" your information online and if so, why? The elephant in the room is the fact that you are telling the rest of us that we are more or less delusional if we believe that we have privacy online while keeping your information private anyway. In brick and mortar terms you're saying that people can break into your house at anytime with impunity and steal your shit and then turning around and buying security systems. I'm not following your logic...
34
Technically, they can, @33. Most locksmiths will admit that.

Security systems don't make you safer, they make you more likely to kill your kids sneaking out/in of the house.
35
Dear Will in Seattle: I, too, wish to air-condition my house for free, by using surplus cold air from my refrigerator.
Please tell me more of this interesting theory of yours!

Also: Costco Chicken Meme!
36
@ 34, you must have missed the *with impunity* part of my post. There are consequences to breaking into people's homes.
37
"I did take Law in grade 10" is the funniest defense of bullshit I've ever heard, and I've heard them all.

Here's a problem with your credentials, Will, and it's a familiar one with you: credentials don't protect you from the truth. If you were the bastard son of F. Lee Bailey and Johnny Cochran, with law degrees from Harvard, Columbia and Yale, that would make statements like "Under DCMA this allows you to do a takedown" WORSE, not better, because that statement is nonsensical.

So is everything you said @4. You haven't defended those statements at all, because you can't. They aren't true; actually they don't even make enough logical sense to be assigned a truth value.

Which is about what one would expect from the world's stupidest human being, who took "Law in grade 10" forty years ago, and has been packing his brain with overheard half-truths he didn't understand ever since.
38
@33. And in large part the answer is "No." I dont put up photos or statuses or content that I want some people to see and others not to, not anywhere. I don't have secret accounts on websites that I don't want people to trace back to me or trace to each other.

The paranoia of knowing that anything I do on the internet could come back to bite me in the ass is tempered by the fact that I'm not very important. I'm not a public figure or of general interest to the public, and privacy settings aren't going to protect from the two main risks: 1) people who know me with some sort of personal vendetta. Any dedicated individual with a personal vendetta is going to be able to bypass privacy settings and passwords anyway. 2) Massive data leaks like the ones that have happened with AOL and Netflix that involve companies releasing data they believe to be de-identified that actually isn't. These are also not protected by privacy settings.

But whatever, you can probably test my settings out for yourself if you want. I'm sure you can find me on facebook with a minimal amount of effort.
39
I hold people who post facebook copypasta in only slightly higher regard than I hold birthers and people who are into crystal healing.
40
@4: "Actually, as the writer, you own Copyright, and Facebook is officially put on notice that the works are yours."

Do you ever tire of being stupid.
41
This post is great, big "Duh!" However, people are that dumb.
42
@Fnarf - I am generally down with your slamming WIS, but I myself have issued a couple of DMCA notices to FB this week, in the context of a campaign where my writings on FB and likenesses there were misappropriated.

FB complied pretty promptly, the first time in 3 hours, the second in 12.

Poof, the posts, and the entire threads were gone.

Please wait...

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