Passage Two

Facebook, the Web’ s most popular social networking site, has been caught in a content-rights battle after revealing earlier that it was granting itself permanent rights to users’ photos, wall posts and other information even after a user closed an account. Under fire from tens of thousands of users, Facebook said it is revering to its old policy on user information. The site posted a brief message on users’ home pages that said it was returning to its previous “Terms of Use” policy.

Member backlash against Facebook began after a consumer advocate website. The Consumerist flagged a change made to Facebook’ s policy earlier. The company deleted a sentence from the old Terms of Use. That sentence said Facebook could not claim any rights to original content that a user uploaded once the user closed his or her account. It replaced it with: “You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time… However, you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content. ” In response, Chris Walters, Associate Editor of Consumerist. com, wrote in a post, “Make sure you never upload anything you don’ t feel comfortable giving away, because it’ s Face book’ s now. ” Thousands of indignant members either canceled their accounts or created online petitions. Among them were more than 64, 000 who joined a group called “The People Against the New Terms of Service. ”