You have just taken some great pictures and uploaded them to Facebook and Flickr. So who “owns” the copyrights to these pictures? You might say, “Of course I do!” Are you sure about that? I would guess that most people would think that they “own” the pictures. How many people actually read the EULA‘s for sites like these? Check out what the Facebook EULA says here.
Some time back a family was told of a friend seeing their family Christmas card picture in an advertisement in eastern Europe. Did they give the agency permission? No, it was a complete surprise to them. The Internet has a way of distributing information in ways that you might not understand of even think of!
Now a while back facebook got into a bit of a tiff with their comunity about some of their terms. As stated in this article facebook claimed to retain the rights to use the information. This set off quite a storm of protest and facebook did a re-evaluation of their terms. Again — who owns the data.
I just want you to think before posting up information. Do you retain your rights? Are you giving others the right to use your information? Are you giving away distribution or other types of rights? Do you even know how to figure out if you are giving away rights? Do you care? It is ok to not care but not ok for you not to know, in my opinion.
As an example here is a link to some good information about facebook and how to protect yourself. Did you know all the information? Could you have figured it out — or been able to search enough to find this information? Make yourself aware.