After much criticism from the public, Facebook has reverted to their old Terms of Service… for now.

In the very early hours of Monday morning USA time, Facebook changed their Terms of Service, the boring legalese rules of any site out there that hardly any one ever reads. Well, someone did read the changes, and what followed was a vicious firestorm of bad press for the ultra-popular social network.

This is what the old version said.

You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.

The new version of the ToS said:

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

Where it got even a little bit scarier is where is clued you in as to when this license would expire… never. The following is from the “Termination” section.

The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook Service: Prohibited Conduct, User Content, Your Privacy Practices, Gift Credits, Ownership; Proprietary Rights, Licenses, Submissions, User Disputes; Complaints, Indemnity, General Disclaimers, Limitation on Liability, Termination and Changes to the Facebook Service, Arbitration, Governing Law; Venue and Jurisdiction and Other.

Essentially Facebook was telling its users that the moment you uploaded anything to their system, it became their property forever, even if you left the service. Not only could they hold on to it forever, they could do anything they please with it, including selling it, without ever having to acknowledge you as the creator of the work, or they could even use it in advertising if they so desired. Imagine how you would feel 10 years from now having that picture of you doing a keg stand showing up on a billboard across from the office where you are interviewing for a new job.

The collective cry of outrage was deafening online, finally prompting the very reclusive CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg,to take to the company blog on Monday afternoon and try to clear up some of the hard feelings people were having towards the new ToS.  He makes valid points that they need a license that covers the copy of an image that resides in a user’s inbox even if you should leave the service.  This is a good point, but it still doesn’t explain why they felt the need to say that they could also basically do anything they could ever dream of with your content.  As Adam Ostrow of Mashable said:

Ultimately, Facebook’s stance can be summarized as “trust us, we won’t do anything bad.”

Right around the same time Mr. Zuckerberg posted his response, Amanda L. French posted a comparison of the Facebook ToS with those of other services such as MySpace, Flickr, YouTube and so on.  To be blunt, it showed Facebook in a terrible light, and it fueled the user revolt even more.

To really get a feeling for how users felt about the ToS, yesterday Facebook polled their users to find out how they felt about the new rules, and the results showed 56% wanted them changed, 36% were fine with them and 8% didn’t know/didn’t care.  While not an overwhelming majority, it was still a sign people were annoyed, and so Facebook gave in and changed back to the old ToS.

While this may be a victory for the users of Facebook, some of the decision may have been prompted by the news that the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) announcing that they were preparing to file a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over the new ToS.  Either way, the roll back has happened, but as Duncan Riley of The Inquisitr points out, it is not time to rest and just forget this happened because they still plan to rewrite the rules again, and if the users don’t express their views now, we could end up going through this whole drama all over again when the newest version is released.

On a personal note, I didn’t agree with the ToS at all, but honestly I’ve always pretty much thought that anything uploaded to the Internet becomes uncontrollable once it is out there, this just made that thought a bit more official.