New Facebok terms of service and possible implications

http://consumerist.com/5150175/facebooks-new-terms-of-service-we-can-do-anything-we-want-with-your-content-forever

This article summarizes the new terms of service and their implications. Basically, anything posted on Facebook is instantly the proparty of Facebook even if you close your account. All material can be resold or recontextualized by Facebook.

While excessive commercial use of user content would be bad publicity for Facebook, the new language must have been crafted with specific goals or scenarios in mind. There was a publicized case several years ago of a girl from the US who's image was taken off Flickr and used in an Australian cell phone ad. When it came to her attention she tried to sue and lost because of a similar TOS agreement.

Besides LinkedIn, which I use for professional purposes I would never recreationally use a social networking site or post photos or personal other content online. Obviously, this blog and participation on the class's site is obligatory. While I assume nothing will come of this (still 0 hits), the idea of using a commercial product to essentially brand an individuals social/intellectual identity seems corrosive to individuality. With 160,000,000 users, it seems to me that it would be impossible for each of those pages to reflect the uniqueness or individuality of the users.
- While I'm sure there are many holes in this idea, it was my initial gut reaction to Friendster and I haven't had a change of heart even though every single one of my friends is on Facebook. I still feel that if I want to share something with a friend I can call/email/text/visit them, and the way I choose to represent the information will differ slightly depending on my relationship with the recipient. Therefore, I would effectively need a different Facebook page for every person I know, which would negate the value-added efficiency a product like Facebook brings to one's social life.