Well, appar­ently there was enough stink made about the “eter­nal license” for user con­tent in Facebook’s Terms of Use that they have decided to return to the pre­vi­ous version.

“Over the past cou­ple of days, we have received a lot of ques­tions and com­ments about these updated terms and what they mean for peo­ple and their infor­ma­tion,” read the state­ment, which Face­book Chief Exec­u­tive Mark Zucker­berg expanded upon in a blog post. “Because of the feed­back we received, we have decided to return to our pre­vi­ous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that peo­ple have raised.”

I believe this is a smart move by Face­book execs, because I’m sure alot of users were think­ing about ditch­ing the ser­vice.  (I know I was.)  The way the Terms were worded seemed to be a major breach in pri­vacy rights afforded the user.  This is a con­tro­ver­sial area, rel­a­tively still uncharted ter­ri­to­ries, and as such needs to be approached prag­mat­i­cally and with the fore­most con­cern for rights to privacy.

[Zuckerberg] added that the com­pany would work on a “sub­stan­tial revi­sion” of the terms and give Face­book users a role in craft­ing it by voic­ing their opin­ions through a group on its Web site, “Face­book Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.”

I like the idea of a “Face­book Bill of Rights” - it will go a long way in defin­ing how social media net­work­ing sites approach user con­tent.  User con­tent should be treated with the utmost respect; how­ever, it is the user’s ulti­mate respon­si­bil­ity to pro­tect his or her own pri­vacy.  Users should not put any­thing on a social net­work­ing site that they don’t want the gen­eral pub­lic hav­ing knowl­edge of.

Source:  Wall Street Journal