3 Reasons Why You’ll Give Up Ownership of Your Content
Recently I was asked about who owns the content posted on a social networking platform – not the first time though. The question came up after my friend had heard that the platform took ownership of the content after the member posted it and that they could do anything they wanted with it! I suggested first that the initial comment might have come from a person that was repeating what they had heard, wanting to appear well-informed, but may not have actually read the Term of Service (TOS) for the platform as most people never look at the TOS when they create an account anyway.
Wanting to reply in-fact and not heresay in my response, I linked to the TOS of one of my favorite platforms, LinkedIn (TOS link), and singled out the first paragraph to draw attention to how they dealt with the issue.
“License and warranty for your submissions to LinkedIn. You own the information you provide LinkedIn under this Agreement, and may request its deletion at any time, unless you have shared information or content with others and they have not deleted it, or it was copied or stored by other users. Additionally, you grant LinkedIn a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual, unlimited, assignable, sublicenseable, fully paid up and royalty-free right to us to copy, prepare derivative works of, improve, distribute, publish, remove, retain, add, process, analyze, use and commercialize, in any way now known or in the future discovered, any information you provide, directly or indirectly to LinkedIn, including, but not limited to, any user-generated content, ideas, concepts, techniques or data to the services, you submit to LinkedIn, without any further consent, notice and/or compensation to you or to any third parties.”
When we next spoke, they recited the part that begins with ‘Additionally, you grant…‘ and pointed out that this was precisely the language that gave their friend, and now them, reason to question whether or not participation in an online social network is something a business or business person should do! Here was the damning evidence that showed that they would take whatever your said in the network and use it to their own benefit, never having to share any of it with you!
I agreed that this kind of a license to use, re-use and otherwise manage the content we all post online was egregious - but needed. The biggest reason is because we live in such a litigious society and that if we did not give this permission, it would open up the platform provider to a whole universe of claims that content had been mismanaged once turned over to the social platform in question. If it were me as the social platform owner, I would also demand a similar right to the content – but only because the member wanted me to facilitate the exchange between they and their followers, friends or constituents – not because I really cared what they posted or how potentially lucrative the idea might be.
The reason why I think we’ve been driven to give over this much ownership of our content is laid out in three parts; 1) why a social platform needs to gain unrestricted access to the content posted, 2) the brand promise and how it impacts participant behavior and finally, 3) member expectations of confidentiality and privacy.
All Access Required
1) Unrestricted access to the content you’ve posted is required, primarily because without it, YOUR presence would not function. You share posts, messages and various content with your friends, but the delivery of that content is left to the platform provider. The platform will deliver the message for you, but they have no mechanism or interest in monitoring the content once posted for proper use – your friend might actually reuse the content in a manner you did not intend (BTW, you should expect it) and it is this unanticipated usage that sets the stage for the terms of the license. If the platform provider did not gain access to the unrestricted license for your posts, it would not be long before a member claimed that the social network published content they did not own or that they permitted it to be published against the wishes of the member. At almost a billion members for Facebook and 110M members for LinkedIn, how possibly could they be expected to manage your preferences for your content on their platform.
All rubbish of course, but we live in a litigious society where you can pretty much count on the 5 ANY’s of a Lawsuit – ANY one can sue you at ANY time, for ANY reason, ANY where for ANY amount. By you granting unrestricted access to the owners of the platform, you essentially inure them from any liability for the potentially damaging actions of your network. There are other permissions and fair-use doctrine that also apply, but by securing this license from the content creator (you) they can provide you a good quality experience on their service for a fair price – I think free is a pretty fair price.
Brand Promise of Confidentiality
2) We as consumers of the services provided by the platform have come to expect a certain level of privacy in our postings, but not necessarily because the platform owes it to us, but because we have come to expect it over the years. For example, I see the LinkedIn brand promise as that they will manage the platform functionality in such a way they will not intentionally damage my persona by their actions.
Since they launched the platform in 2003, we’ve come to expect a certain behavior from their brand and so far, they’ve delivered pretty well. If they had opted to use member content in some way other than what members had intended, the social media ecosphere would be filled with messages from offended users – there has not been any such transgression that I recall however. This becomes then the brands promise to handle your content reliably. So long as that brand promise is maintained, the social network of humans, supported by the platform, functions.
First Rule of Fight Club… Don’t talk about Fight Club…
3) There is an expectation of privacy and confidentiality within the network, but that is ONLY manageable by the member. The best way to maintain privacy around you, your company and your ideas is that trade secrets and intellectual property should NEVER be disclosed in any online forum that has the potential for unrestricted public access. This is where knowing what NOT to publish to the web comes into play. The only way to keep a secret is to not share it at all to anyone.
LinkedIn and similar publicly accessible online platforms are not the place to post a secret or your IP. If you send a private message using the platform it will not be disclosed without a court order, but that’s not the issue being considered – it’s the ownership and control of the message posted in a public forum, which as the TOS specify, you grant an unrestricted license for – both to the platform and your personal network.
The short answer for my friend then is to not create posts around trade secrets or intellectual property online at any time for any reason – it is a secret after all.
Intent Engines and Facebook Verbs
