This is just something I’ve noticed has been appearing a lot in Canadian news media. I am not sure if the same trend is happening in the states, but it seems that the major news outlets in Canada, such as CBC and CTV, have been using profile pictures and wall postings taken from Facebook in their news stories. This raises a few questions:
- Are news outlets allowed to do this? I can easily see this practice being legal if Facebook granted them permission to do so, since everyone grants Facebook a license to use their data however Facebook pleases. If that is the case, then Facebook has been granting news outlets permission to use are data in their news stories. How do you feel about that? Perhaps there is some fair use clause that allows news outlets to use profile pictures, and wall postings in their news stories. Otherwise, the copyright of images you post on Facebook still belong to you, and I wonder if news outlets have the legal right to violate your copyright. I would love someone to clarify the law on this.
- How do you feel about news outlets using your Facebook profile to do background research on you if you suddenly become the perpetrator or victim of some crime, or the subject of a major news story? Whenever the issue of privacy and the Internet comes up, usually we give examples of future employers researching future employees, but another issue that is seldom considered is the media publishing data you posted about yourself in major news stories.
If you want to see some examples of how the media has been using Facebook in their news stories, take a look at the recent articles about the alleged abductors of Victoria Stafford (CBC has posted several photos of the accused in their articles taken from Facebook, and CTV has even posted a Facebook wall survey done by one of the accused). I also remember this article of Tim McLean, who was beheaded on a Greyhound bus outside of Winnipeg (in this case the photo was taken from MySpace, but the article does mention comments made on a Facebook group).
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