OK, so I admit Facebook is pretty cool. I just don't feel like performing such highschool-reminiscent activities as writing down the names of the last 23 people that wrote on my wall, then answering such questions as "Would 4 and 18 make a good couple?" Maybe it's my time of life -- married, with child. I don't have ample time to while away networking online. I'm already more-or-less networked.
The following, from the Facebook terms of use that neither I nor, I suspect, 99.9 percent of users bothered reading when joining, has given me pause:
By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. 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.
Hmm. We blithely sign away the rights to whatever we post. All is cool now, but one day the Web's erosion of privacy may one day backfire, if the wrong hands get the information or the wrong policies prevail. Facebook friends beware. (Or am I just a cranky guy spoiling the connnectivity and fun?)


10 Years Ago This Week: June 5, 1997
A man falls from a helicopter in the sky over Parliament. So ends the Canadian polling scandal -- and the 1997 Canadian election.
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