The story of how I find cool stuff, inevitably break said cool stuff, and (hopefully) end up fixing whatever I did

I would like to take some time now to discuss this whole Facebook Terms of Service issue that I’m sure you have seen lingering at the top of your facebook home page.  I personally don’t find it at all suprising that facebook tried to pull this crap but it is nonetheless pretty freakin’ scary that they almost got away with it. For those of you that don’t know, Facebook attempted to silently alter their Terms of Service to basically say that they have the rights to anything and everything you decide to stick in your little facebook world.  By silently I mean that they changed it and didn’t bother to let anyone know that they now own all the stuff that you decide to post.  They CLAIM that they do not need to let anyone know that they have altered their terms of service but that is absolute crap.  They knew full well how bad this would piss people off and so they tried to sneak it in without anybody noticing it.  Lucky for all of you guys there are more people like me out there defending your internet rights from dumb (and borderline illegal) stuff like this.  The reason that facebook claims they did nothing wrong in not letting anyone know is because of this little clause in the original ToS, “revisable without notice and with or without cause.”  This is like crossing your fingers while swearing on the bible in court and claiming that you can’t be held in comtempt for going against your oath because you were crossing your fingers.  There is another page that goes along with this that advises facebook users to read the Terms of Service every time you visit your page.  Have you ever read the thing?  It’s god awfully long and full of horrible legal dribble that no one wants to read every single time they want to get on and stalk that hot girl from down the hall or post a picture of themselves and their significant other touching their tongues together. Now besides the fact that they claim they should be able to alter their ToS whenever they want and not tell anyone, there’s the issue that they tried to take ownership of all things on your facebook.  CEO Mark Zuckerburg tried to talk his way around the subject by saying that the clause was necessary to drive the social features of the site, but I seriously could have drawn up a ToS myself that could have done that without trying to take the rights to all of our stuff.  Nice try Zuckerburg, but we just aren’t that stupid.  Let me present you with a hypothetical situation.  Let’s say that you have a glorius picture of yourself posted on facebook, with complete privacy settings enacted and everything so that only the people you want can see it.  In this picture you are doing a kegstand with two dude holding you up, your skirt up to your boobs, and your pink victoria secret thong in full view that doesn’t cover up that little cliched star tattoo on your hip that you don’t want your mom to know about.  Under these new terms of service that facebook didnt bother to tell you about, it would be perfectly legal for them to use this picture in an advertising campaign of theirs.  Let’s say facebook decided to campaign in your local college newspaper, and used this picture in the ad.  Your mom comes to town for the weekend and picks up this newspaper and sees this picture of you doing this awesome kegstand.  She recognizes the thong because it has gone through the laundry at home before and she also recognizes the skirt because she bought it for you last christmas.  BUSTED, and facebook has done absolutely nothing wrong.  Now I know this is a gross exaggeration of a possible outcome but I did it to prove a point.  Freaky, huh?  The other crazy thing is that even if you were to delete your facebook, they could keep it around on their servers and use all your stuff for their gain anyways…since they do own it and all.  Even more freaky.  Now that I have alerted you to this almost successful personal information hijacking attempt that facebook made, you should vote in that poll to your right and tell me what you think about this whole situation.

On a lighter note, I think I aced my stats test this morning…which is awesome.  I am also making my way back to Gem City (hahaha, it always makes me laugh when I say that) tonight to see off a friend who is leaving for boot camp soon.  For those of you who don’t know what Gem City is, it’s Dayton….now see why I am laughing?  Anyways, I feel like I have rambled enough for today and provided you with some useful information to go kick facebook in the nuts with.

And now for your viewing pleasure, this video was suggested by William….so here you go man