Is is okay if Facebook takes those photos of your kids that you posted on your Facebook accounts and sells them to an advertising agency?  Or makes money by selling them through a stock photo businesses?  How about those photos of your last vacation?  Okay if FB sells those to a travel marketer?

For those of you who syndicate your blog post into Facebook as notes, is it okay if Facebooks claims copyrights on those?

Well, if you have any problem with any of these ideas, take a look at Facebooks recently updated Terms of Service ("TOS").  You might be surprised to find that, according to the new TOS, anything you upload or post to your Facebook account belongs to Facebook--forever.  Facebook claims the right to sell or sub-license your content (uh, I mean its content that used to be your content until you put it on Facebook) for any purpose, including commercial gain, forever.

The old TOS used to state that when you closed your account, any rights claimed by Facebook to your content would expire.  Not any more.

Compare the new Facebook TOS with that of Google's Picasa service:

"9.4 Other than the limited license set forth in Section 11, Google acknowledges and agrees that it obtains no right, title or interest from you (or your licensors) under these Terms in or to any Content that you submit, post, transmit or display on, or through, the Services, including any intellectual property rights which subsist in that Content (whether those rights happen to be registered or not, and wherever in the world those rights may exist). Unless you have agreed otherwise in writing with Google, you agree that you are responsible for protecting and enforcing those rights and that Google has no obligation to do so on your behalf."

Polar opposites.  Google is being very reasonable.  Facebook is being very unreasonable.

Bottom line, if you care about what happens to your photos or other content, don't post them to Facebook.