owning

This page considers questions about 'ownership' of profiles, messages and other information that appears on social network services.

It covers -

• introduction
• privacy
• intellectual property
• departures

It is complemented by discussion elsewhere on this site regarding personality rights, privacy, consumer protection and intellectual property.

    introduction

The preceding pages of this profile have indicated that social network services have attracted millions of participants, people who use the services to exchange messages, search for other people (eg sort on the basis of location and sexual affinity or professional expertise) and provide access to content that ranges from personal profiles to blogs, photos, video, articles, book chapters and other indications of employability.

Who owns that content? What are the expectations of participants, service providers and third parties? Are SNS a copyright-free zone? Does the content expire when the author dies? Can you make an embarrassing item 'go away' once you sober up or read about SNS data mining?

    departures

By late 2006 'departures' from some social network services were becoming a point of contention among government agencies, SNS operators, individuals and consumer advocates. Contention reflected -

• failure of some SNS operators to give effect to commitments that content would be deleted when a SNS participant left the particular service
• questions about control over some profiles, images and other content when the 'author' died or was disabled (noted here)
• the vagueness or incomprehensibility of some terms of service regarding what happens when an individual withdraws from particular services
• the cumbersomeness of processes that participants in some services must follow to renounce their membership and ensure that content was deleted.

Facebook, for example, has faced recurrent criticism, with critics quipping that "It's like the Hotel California. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave".

Critics commented that although Facebook offers participants an option to 'deactivate' their accounts, its servers retain copies of content in those accounts indefinitely and that many users who have contacted Facebook to request deletion did not succeed in erasing their material from the SNS.

That difficulty was justified by Facebook on the basis that "deactivated accounts mean that a user can reactivate at any time and their information will be available again just as they left it". Its terms of service indicate that "you may remove your user content from the site at any time" but that "you acknowledge that the company may retain archived copies of your user content", with an indication in the Facebook privacy policy that "removed information may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time", with 'reasonable' not being defined.

The New York Times unsurprisingly noted a furore in early 2008, with irate consumers noting that participants who contacted Facebook's customer service department were informed that expungement of their Facebook presence required them to systematically delete, line by line, all of the profile information, 'wall' messages and group memberships the participant might have created within Facebook.
“Users can also have their account completely removed by deleting all of the data associated with their account and then deactivating it,” Ms. Sezak said in her message. “Users can then write to Facebook to request their account be deleted and their e-mail will be completely erased from the database.”



    introduction

h Facebook’s Web site does not inform departing users that they must delete information from their account in order to close it fully — meaning that they may unwittingly leave anything from e-mail addresses to credit card numbers sitting on Facebook servers.
Only people who contact
But even users who try to delete every piece of information they have ever written, sent or received via the network have found their efforts to permanently leave stymied. Other social networking sites like MySpace and Friendster, as well as online dating sites like eHarmony.com, may require departing users to confirm their wishes several times — but in the end they offer a delete option.
“Most sites, even online dating sites, will give you an option to wipe your slate clean,” Mr. Das said.

A spokeswoman for TRUSTe, which is based in San Francisco, said its account deletion process was “inconvenient,” but that Facebook was “being responsive to us and they currently meet our requirements.”

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