February 17th, 2009

Posted by Sam Diaz

There was some Facebook backlash over the long U.S. weekend that has prompted some calls for boycotts over two sentences that were taken out of the company’s Terms of Services agreement earlier this month. Those sentences once allowed users to delete all of their uploaded content – pics, videos, notes and so on – and walk away from the service with only “archived copies” left behind for Facebook. And one day, that legal language disappeared from the TOS.

That means Facebook can continue to do all the things you allow it to do with your content as a user – stream, publish, copy, store, distribute and, yeah, even sublicense it for promotional purposes – even after you quit. And when the consumer watchdog site, The Consumerist, highlighted the missing language on its blog Sunday evening, the news started to spread.

Users are outraged, so much so that they have started to – yup, you guessed it – form protest groups on Facebook, including one called People Against the new Terms of Service (TOS), which was pushing 16,000 members early Tuesday. But they’re actually getting mad for the wrong reason.

Sure, get upset about how they can use your content if you’d like but that’s not new. We’re just finding out about it – and that’s what’s even more disturbing. But more on that in a minute.

Facebook rightly disrupted the long U.S. holiday weekend and jumped into action to launch some damage control, posting a Monday afternoon blog post from CEO Mark Zuckerberg:

Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with. When a person shares information on Facebook, they first need to grant Facebook a license to use that information so that we can show it to the other people they’ve asked us to share it with. Without this license, we couldn’t help people share that information. One of the questions about our new terms of use is whether Facebook can use this information forever. When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created—one in the person’s sent messages box and the other in their friend’s inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear.

If I’m understanding what Mark is saying, just because one of my friends decides to delete his account doesn’t mean that I suddenly can no longer see the picture that he uploaded and tagged of me and him. So, in that sense, if the user who uploaded it goes away, the picture stays – and my friends are still free to see it.

Of course that makes sense – just like the analogy of sent and received e-mail makes sense. And, sure, it’s probably reasonable for Facebook to clarify this language in an updated TOS. Really, I don’t know that this is worth some sort of widespread boycott effort. But, with that said, let’s jump back to that better reason to be upset and look at two other sentences in the TOS:

We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change or delete portions of these Terms at any time without further notice. Your continued use of the Facebook Service after any such changes constitutes your acceptance of the new Terms.

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Whoa! You get to change the rules and you don’t have to tell me about it? And just because I log-in again tomorrow – just like I do at some point pretty much every day – means that i agree to the new rules you’ve put in place? How is that fair? After all, this is a social networking site that has built a huge following based on tools for communicating with other people – and you can’t “communicate” to me that you changed the rules? From Mark’s blog post:

We’re at an interesting point in the development of the open online world where these issues are being worked out. It’s difficult terrain to navigate and we’re going to make some missteps…

Clearly.

In all fairness, the company posted an entry on its corporate blog about the new term when it made the changes, stating that it had “simplified and clarified a lot of information that applies to you, including some things you shouldn’t do when using the site” and then went on to talk about protecting you and your privacy.

Who knows if anyone at Facebook would have foreseen this type of backlash? Still, maybe that post needed some more meat to it – maybe bullet points of all the changes and what they really meant. After all, a link to the new TOS is useless without a copy of the old one for comparison and, absent of those, a line in a blog post that mentions changes to “a lot of information that applies to you” without any explanation does little good.

One last thing: couldn’t the company have also covered its bases by blasting an e-mail to every user? After all, Facebook does have an address for each of its members. And it is the one single thread – the license – that keeps Facebook connected its users. So, in that sense, it’s kind of important.

Whenever my bank makes any changes to a privacy policy or interest rate, they send a copy of the new agreement in the mail. Whether I read it or not is a different story – but at least they’ve reached out to me to notify me of the changes. In this case, from best I can tell, that’s where Facebook dropped the ball.

February 17th, 2009

Posted by Jennifer Leggio

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After much Internet uproar since the weekend over Facebook’s updated terms of service, the social networking site stated tonight that it would revert to its previous terms of service (TOS). In a blog post published late tonight by Mark Zuckerberg, the founder said that the TOS published prior to Feb. 4 would stay in effect until the company resolved user issues and addressed concerns. According to the post:

Many of us at Facebook spent most of today discussing how best to move forward. One approach would have been to quickly amend the new terms with new language to clarify our positions further. Another approach was simply to revert to our old terms while we begin working on our next version. As we thought through this, we reached out to respected organizations to get their input… Our terms aren’t just a document that protect our rights; it’s the governing document for how the service is used by everyone across the world. Given its importance, we need to make sure the terms reflect the principles and values of the people using the service.

Zuckerberg says that the the next version of the TOS will be “written clearly in language that everyone can understand.” Condescension aside, Zuckerberg also says that this time around, the users will have more input in crafting the TOS, which the company hopes to complete in the next few weeks. This is a follow-up to the polling Facebook did regarding the TOS in the first place.

Anyone interested in participating in the development of the new TOS can join the Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities group. The group currently has less than 200 members with only 23 questions posted.

February 18th, 2009

Posted by Mary Jo Foley

Internet Explorer 8 {IE 8} is nearing the finish line, with a March release to manufacturing looking like a distinct possibility. But is IE 8 — or, more accurately — Web site developers and owners — really ready?

I have been testing IE 8 since the code became available publicly. And one thing that hasn’t changed much over the past several months is the fact that many Web sites still aren’t compatible with IE 8.

I’m not blaming the site owners here. Microsoft officials have known all along that even though the IE team is doing the “right” thing by finally making IE more standards-compliant, they are risking “breaking the Web” because the vast majority of Web sites still are written to work correctly with previous, non-standards-compliant versions of IE.

Microsoft has tried to mitigate the effects of moving to a default standards-based view in a few ways. IE 8 comes with a “Compatibility View” button that will “fix” a seemingly broken site if a user knows to press it. Microsoft went a step beyond this with IE 8 Release Candidate 1, issued in January, by adding a downloadable list of sites that would automatically trigger IE 8 to move directly to compatibility mode, rather than standards mode.

(Here is the list of the 2,400 sites that are on Version 1.0 of Microsoft’s Compatibility View list.)

The Compatibility View list includes some major sites — Apple.com, CNN.com, eBay, Facebook, Google.com, NYTimes.com — even Microsoft.com (!) — and lots, lots more. Users also have the option of adding IE-8-incompatible sites they visit that didn’t make it onto the list that will be appended to the schema list they download.

The Compatibility List has made my IE 8 browsing a lot more stable. When I go to the NYTimes.com site now, it just works. The Compatibility View button (the icon for which looks like a broken Web page and is typically located directly to the right of the URL address bar) doesn’t appear at all (as is the case for all sites on the Compatibility List).

That said, there are a lot of sites I visit that aren’t on the list. And more often than not, they fail to render correctly with IE 8. Sometimes I remember that I should try hitting the Compatibility View button to see if there are boxes and buttons and text there that I can’t see because I am using IE 8. Other times, when I am visiting a site with which I’m unfamiliar, I don’t realize what I’m missing.

I’m at the point now — if a site looks weird, is slow or just doesn’t seem to be working right — I simply assume it is IE 8’s fault. Sometimes I’m right (as I discover when I open the same site in Firefox or Chrome and it looks and works fine). Other times, cialis professional vs cialis I’m not — a site just might be down or broken. The bottom line is I’ve come to expect a rocky browsing experience when using IE 8.

I doubt the compatibility experience is going to change much, if at all, between now and the time IE 8 is released. For months, Microsoft has been banging the drum for site owners to update their code — either by adding compatibility tags or redoing sites to take into account the changes in IE 8. Many site admins and developers have said they weren’t willing to take on that task until Microsoft delivered a near-final test release — at least a Release Candidate.

Some critics have said they think Microsoft is doing a disservice to developers by offering compatibility work-arounds. They say Microsoft created its own problems by delivering previous IE releases that flouted standards — which is true. And now Microsoft should bite the bullet and just go the 100-percent-standards route, they reason. That might be a better course in the long run for Web developers tired of having to do separate versions of sites and apps for standards-based browsers and for IE, but it punishes Web users in the interim.

What’s going to happen when IE 8 goes final and non-techie users have it pushed to them or get new PCs with IE 8 preloaded? I wouldn’t be surprised to see further losses in IE market share, as frustrated users find only some of their favorite Web sites displaying correctly but don’t really understand why. Perhaps Opera and its chums won’t need the antitrust courts to get a leg up on Microsoft, after all….

What’s your take? Is Microsoft taking the right course with Compatibility Mode in IE 8?

February 16th, 2009

Posted by Zack Whittaker

After checking Twitter a few moments ago, I was shocked, horrified and appalled at the news that a student from Chicago threatened suicide over the forceful, bullying tactics of major media corporations.

I didn’t think my 200th post on ZDNet would result in me saying this.

I have a fairly controversial opinion when it comes to software piracy, and sharing music and other multimedia online. But considering hundreds of millions of people share and download music every day, the chances of being struck by one of these lawsuits is en par with winning the cialis professional tadalafil lottery or being killed in a nasty milk float accident.

The Recording Industry Association of America (”RIAA” hereon in) with the assistance of other major corporations, including EMI, Warner, Sony BMG, has reported to be bullying students and “innocent people” in a series of attacks in regards to music piracy. Whilst some may say sharing a music file with another person is like walking into a shop and stealing the CD, I would whole-heartedly disagree.

I don’t know a huge amount about the legalities, nor do I understand US law or even the politics too much, so I’ll give this the best go I can. Many of my links direct back here, so please do check out the sourced article.

Thomas Perrelli is the “main guy” who shut down Internet radio by helping to mastermind massive fees imposed on companies such as Pandora.com. Also we have Donald Verrilli, who was one of the main people involved in the attempts of Viacom suing YouTube.

These two men, Perrelli and Verrilli, don’t have a very positive opinion in the online world.

Long story short, according to p2pnet:

“I eventually had a long telephone conversation with girl I mentioned earlier, the one who was threatening to kill herself, and she said she, too, would write something about her experiences. But she changed her mind after her parents agreed to bail her out.

She wouldn’t tell me the price, but she said she now hoped she’d be able to get back to her studies and on with her life.”

There is then the story of Brittany Kruger, who could never be considered a pirate of any kind, shared some music with a few of her friends. This led to the RIAA instigating a lawsuit against her, and described as “being hung out to dry by the labels, with the RIAA fronting for them.”

Her full story can be found a quarter way down the page in blue.

In both my honest, professional opinion, as both a journalist and a student, these vicious, thoughtless, bullying tactics need to stop. Yes I’m sure to some extent this post may not make sense, and you’re probably looking for a point. There is my point, America, because students should not be victims of media giants who take advantage of the law.

Do you have a hard time keeping track of when your favorite musicians release new music? I know I do! I can’t keep track of who's releasing a new CD and when. I love to support my favorite artists by buying their music, but since I like so many different artists, it all gets jumbled up in my brain!

But no more! With Feed Revolution, you can keep track of all your favorite musicians and get an e-mail when they release something new. It's really easy to sign up for as well!

Just type in the names of artists or bands you like. (Note: If you have a last.fm username, you can import artists from your playlists there). Next, enter in the e-mail address you’ll want the alerts sent to. Then click on the button to sign up!

While you'll be auto-logged in, you’ll need to click on the link you receive in your e-mail to activate the e-mail feed. As soon as you activate your e-mail feed, you'll start getting e-mails whenever one of your favorite musicians has a new release!

Once you’re logged in, you’ll be on the New Releases page. That's where you can monitor on the Web page what's coming out each month. There's also an Add Artists page, where you can add artists to your list of artists to watch.

If you aren’t logged in and you go to the New Releases page, you can browse through all of the new releases for the month. I thought that was pretty cool! There are 22 pages of new releases for the cialis professional online month of February, so be sure to check it out today!

http://www.feedrevolution.com/signup