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| Facebook Timeline profile |
There is one issue, however, which is of particular concern to this blogger and so serious to have made her sleepless [and also compelled her to spend more time on this social network to "investigate" it].
This is
why she would be delighted to hear 1709 Blog's readers' views on it.
The new [well,
sort of: it was introduced in 2011] Timeline Facebook layout
is intended to make subscribers' profiles look like a sort of online diary
which contains everything these have deemed worth sharing with virtual friends
or anyone on the internet [the
privacy settings are decided by subscribers] since their birth day [this is to be intended literally]. In other words, Facebook Timeline allows you to
"tell your life story".
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| Facebook-related insomnia can be stressful |
This
blogger's concerns relate to the latter, as at the moment Facebook does not
allow you to change the privacy settings for cover photos. This means that
cover photos can be viewed and downloaded by anyone on the internet.
Facebook Pages Terms warn in
fact the subscriber that
"All covers are public. This means that anyone
who visits your Page will be able to see your cover. Covers can't be deceptive,
misleading, or infringe on anyone else's copyright. You may not encourage
people to upload your cover to their personal timelines. Covers may not include
images with more than 20% text."
This
statement raises quite a few issues. Besides those pertaining to users' privacy
and 'classical' copyright infringement (such as unauthorised reproduction),
there are other and possibly broader concerns pertaining to orphan works.
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| Roberto needed his friends's advice to choose a cool cover photo |
This means
that Facebook users have been making available over the internet millions of
photographs [apparently 1.06 billion people use
Facebook every month] for which it may become potentially challenging to
determine who the rights holder is.
The
easiest and quickest solution would be for Facebook to allow subscribers to
decide the audience for their cover photographs, as it seems unreasonable (to
say the least) that one cannot have control over who can see (and download)
their cover photographs.
From a
broader perspective, one might wonder what will be of these millions
photographs in the coming years, after they have been available (and possibly
circulated) over the internet for a certain time and whose relevant rights
holders might have lost memory of/interest for them.
Does the
future of World Wide Web envisage a scenario in which orphans are more numerous
than works with parents?
1 comment:
Eleanora,
I think the answer is, yes, that the World Wide Web absolutely may well create such a world.
If you think facebook is bad, have a look at tumblr and associated tumblr blogs. It is almost impossible to discover the provenance of such picture. When I have tried to source pictures I have found on the web, there has been no systematic way to do it. Each picture has required considerable work.
My only caveat is that image search engines, which are very much in their infancy, may come to the rescue. See things like google's "search by image" facility. Its pretty crude, but it can be used to find matching images and that sometimes will discover the origin of a work where conventional methods would not.
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