14/08/2007

The reputation of the internet persistently alternates from being the indispensable fountain of knowledge to moral corrupter of humankind. 

New sites and services come and go, often with the promise of time-saving, of connecting you with friends and colleagues across the globe, or offering you bargain prophylactics on an unwanted pop-up.

The phenomenon of Facebook has been taking the UK by storm recently. But what are the potential legal implications of signing up to a social networking site?

Who owns the content you post on Facebook? Consider the terms and conditions before consenting and signing-up. In the User Content Posted on the Site section of Facebook’s Terms, it states that by posting content you grant “…an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sub-license) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose…”. 

So if you’re not completely comfortable with the possibility of your profile being shown to randoms in Riyadh, perhaps best not to post. 

Facebook do add that you are at liberty to remove your user content from the site at any time, and in doing so that the license referred to will automatically expire. Yet there appears to be a slight catch: Facebook “…may retain archived copies of your User Content.”

Beware of Facebooking at your workplace. If you’re spending time adding photos and text on your Facebook page during the course of your employment then your employer could potentially claim ownership of such material on the basis of its being created during company time (s11 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988). 

A High Court ruling last month has highlighted that employers have greater rights over their staff’s input on external digital environments than many may realise. 

Some companies are even warning their employees that Facebooking at work is a sackable offence.

Be careful what you post. Merrily listing sensitive personal details for all and sundry to gaze at and you might come a cropper. This information is a potential goldmine to unscrupulous identity fraudsters.

Identity theft costs us over £1.7 billion a year and the payment association APACS say that, last year, online banking fraud alone hit £33.5 million.

Copyright and passing off issues are also important to note here. People mightn’t just nab your financial identity, they might also pinch your creative works and credit themselves with authorship. 

Be particularly careful when posting original compositions, films and the like.

Potential defamation issues abound. Best advice would be not to post anything you wouldn’t wish to share with the world. Even if you elect to make use of the privacy settings, Facebook Terms note “…no security measures are perfect or impenetrable.” 

If you’re caught, there is of course the absolute defence of veritas, but this won’t apply if you’ve plainly asserted that your boss is a chump. Similarly, Facebook has provided a means of surreptitiously gathering information on specific individuals. A recent article in The Daily Telegraph noted that Oxford University had been fining students for antisocial behaviour on the basis of incriminating photographs on Facebook.

As a closing note, Facebook may memorialise you after your death. In the Termination section (not consent to dispatch by a Schwarzenegger type) of their Terms, there is a statement that you consent for other users to access, post and view comments on your profile even after you snuff it. 

Facebook might not be all bad. Not many sites will give you life after death.

Richard Findlay is Entertainment and Media Law partner at Tods Murray LLP

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