Screenshot of Facebook
UPDATE February 18, 08:31 (GMT) - Facebook has withdrawn the changes to its terms of service. In a blog post, founder Mark Zuckerberg said the previous terms would be reinstated 'while we resolve the issues that people have raised'.

For many UK newspapers, having a group, fan or profile page on social networking site Facebook has been a free means of interacting with online readers, sharing content and gathering news leads.

The closure of the site's networks feature was problematic for some journalists, but new Terms of Service (TOS) introduced by Facebook may further impact publishers' relationships with the network.

The new clauses, as highlighted by website The Consumerist, concern Facebook's rights to reuse 'user content' for commercial purposes:
"You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license [sic] (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."
The terms now state that 'user content' will also survive even after a Facebook account is closed.

Copyright risks?
"If the powers that be worked out that by posting links on Facebook, we were giving away copyright, at most papers they would probably stop us doing this. It's difficult enough to overcome the walled garden concept of how websites should be, let alone risk literally giving away our content like this," one regional newspaper digital editor tells Journalism.co.uk.

For Tom Pegg, digital content manager at the Mansfield Chad, the new terms will make the paper more cautious about uploading multimedia content to its profile page in the future, but will continue to use the site to publish feeds of news stories.

"The benefits hugely outweigh any damage it could do. We've only been using Facebook here for a very short time, and reporters are already building a sizeable new bank of contacts - and eventually, it will also be a sizeable new audience," the first digital editor adds.

For publishers who use the network to drive audience members back to their own websites, the terms are unlikely to have an impact, Dan Kerins, web journalist at the Southern Daily Echo, says.

"Our Facebook page and profile are simply there to help us interact with a wider demographic and to drive people from Southampton and beyond towards the array of content we are hosting on our own website," he explains.

Need to be part of Facebook community
Having a Facebook presence is about more than directing readers to a newspapers and it is worth enduring more stringent licensing conditions, says Sam Shepherd, web sub-editor at the Bournemouth Daily Echo.

"One of the battles I have is with journalists who think the point of us using sites like Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, is solely as a portal to make people come to our homepage," she says.

"Facebook has thousands of Bournemouth users. Only 24 of them are friends with us so far. Most of them don't use our site. We can only get them interested in what we do by being where they are. We want them to share our content among themselves and with their friends. We know that people searching for news about Bournemouth often don't know what the paper's called, let alone what our website URL is.

"It's about building brand awareness, which sounds very commercial but is going to be vital. If the price to pay for that is that Facebook has access to the content we upload there, then so be it."

Sharing content
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has said the new terms are not an invitation to share a user's content 'in a way you wouldn't want'.

People want to share information with others on a social network, but also retain full control of that information, he said in a blog post.

Shepherd agrees with Zuckerberg - it's about encouraging sharing of content: "The point of us being on Facebook is to get people to share our content, so that the generation of people who've never read the paper or think it's irrelevant to them will start to make us part of their lives.

"We could decide not to upload anything else to Facebook, but we already have lots of content that we actively encourage people to share. Once you're encouraging sharing, you can't really then turn round and stop people using your stuff. How can you police it? And if they're crediting you, why would you, when it's free distribution to an audience you wouldn't have thought about reaching?"

Relying on third-parties
Despite Zuckerberg's reassurances, this may be a lesson for publishers in the pros and cons of using third party sites and applications, says the Chad's Pegg.

"It comes back to the blurring lines between social networks, search engines and news providers. How long is it before there's a 'Facebook News' column?

"Newspapers have approached Facebook, Twitter etc as if they are free tools, but in fact these are global businesses with their own agendas. It is naive for newspapers to start signing up and using these things without first establishing the terms on which they are doing so, but the allure of these new exciting platforms can sometimes leave common sense behind.

"At the same time - as Twitter is demonstrating - if you don't use these things, then you may as well not exist."

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