This message was seen at the homescreen of my Facebook page this morning. I’ll be joining the Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities group.

CNN story about it

Perez Hilton did the world of Facebook users a huge service yesterday by calling into attention something that a lot of us photographers were already aware of: Facebook’s horrible rights grabbing Terms of Service agreement.

What is that you say? Quite simply, its that legal agreement one needs to accept in order to be granted an account on the popular social networking site. Now, I’m no attorney and I don’t read the agreement on every piece of software I install, so maybe I have little to say on the matter, but that’s never stopped me before.

The main rub here is that Facebook claims to have ownership of all of the photographs you upload onto the site. That means your personal, family snapshots are theirs - to sell, license, modify etc. for perpetuity. Even if you shut down your site or pull the images down. Not cool.

Perez, who kinda interestingly enough has been sued for copyright infringement in the past, suggests boycotting Facebook. I wouldn’t go that far, I think Facebook is a really useful tool to keep up to date with your social networks (and to find interesting links and news online), but I do think it would be smart for people to make a big stink about this. Its worth noting that Hilton himself has not quit Facebook.

Now, Facebook will claim that they need to have terms like this in their agreement in order to cover themselves legally and operate as they do. Bull. Plenty of other sites have perfectly fair TOS agreements and Facebook is no different. Facebook needs to rewrite these terms and not just issue a simple PR statement.

I won’t be pulling my photos off Facebook, but if see them licensing my photos I will be suing them anyway (for the record, I don’t think this is likely).

Admittedly it would be an uphill legal battle, but I don’t place much weight on those TOS agreements because I don’t have any choice but to accept their terms. In my business, contracts are a fair negotiation between two equal parties. Facebook’s agreement does not treat me with that same respect.

For the last two years or so every young person has been told by some older authority person of the “perils” of posting photographs of yourself on facebook doing fun unsavory things.

I personally call this idea as I see it. Bull.

27-year-old Favreau does something mildly funny.

Today in the news is the shocking, scandalous, horrific, unprofessional photo of future White House speechwriter, Jon Favreau (not to be confused with the dude who directed Swingers). Mr. Favreau published a photo of himself, with friends at a party as he jokingly touched a cardboard cutout of Hillary Clinton in an inappropriate manner. He touched a cardboard cutout. This would qualify to many, as a (albeit slightly adult) sight gag. Mildly humorous. Offensive? Only to my Sunday school teacher.

CNN posts this story - and I’m certain it is elsewhere - with a sense of shock and indignation as to suggest that it is somehow a bad thing that an incoming speech writer is : A. Sociable B. Maybe humorous. C. *gasp* a drinker.

Here’s the deal folks - just because there ARENT photos of you on facebook, drinking, enjoying friends, being amusing doesn’t mean ANYONE believes these things don’t happen. So why then is it so shocking to actually see a photo of someone enjoying life?

There are an ENDLESS supply of stories in this world that deserve coverage. A facebook photo, of a young man making a lame joke at a party is not news.

As to the advice given by many to remove all photos of this nature from the internet (especially when job searching) I say this: For every hiring manager, or job opening that will not hire you based on a photo of you drinking at a party, there will be another who respects the fact that their potential hire is multi dimensional. I would also encourage many of you out there (those of you who enjoy life) to consider if you’d even enjoy working for some job/company/person with such puritanical viewpoints on what you should do in your personal life.

As a small (very small) business owner myself, I get a decent amount of inquiries from people asking for work as an assistant, or a stylist, etc. The ones that get responses from me are the people who show me a personality. You have to assume for a lot of jobs that at least one other person out there can do what you do as well as you, or better. In the end I’m not looking to work side by side for hours with someone who is, frankly, boring. Admittedly it is harsh to make such a snap judgement about someone in a short email or telephone call but sometimes that’s all you get. At the end of a long workday, I want the person I’m working with to be someone I want to go grab a beer with.

To Hillary Clinton’s credit, here was her “people’s” official comment:

Sen. Clinton is pleased to learn of Jon’s obvious interest in the State Department, and is currently reviewing his application

And finally a picture of me (on right) making a “sincere face” with friends. To do this correctly one must relax the face, and then using a finger - apply pressure on your forehead just between your eyebrows while pulling up.