There has never been any doubt that when you walk into a store and plonk down your money, then walk out with your purchase you can do anything you want with it. You don’t have to ask the store where you bought the item. You don’t have to ask the company that manufactured the item, and you don’t have to ask permission from the person who might have created the item in the first place.

This is because all physical goods fall under what is commonly referred to as first-rights doctrine which means you buy it and you can do what you want with it.

As much as we might want to believe that this applies to everything we buy the reality is that nothing could be further from the truth. We don’t and especially so with it comes to electronic goods like e-books, software, videos, or music.

This is something that I have mentioned many time before but it is sometimes hard to convince people that this is indeed the case. You don’t own the goods – you ‘own’ a bunch of legalese that can change at any time.

Ed Bott over at ZDNet’s Microsoft Report has an excellent post that breaks down and looks at the legalities of iTunes, Amazon, and eMusic when it comes to your rights when you buy music from their services.

If you buy a digital album from an online service such as the iTunes store, Amazon MP3, or eMusic, you have no legal right to lend that album to a friend, as you could if you had purchased a CD. If you decide after a few listens that you hate the album, well, tough. You can’t resell it. You can’t even legally give it away.

When it comes to software things become even more convoluted. Over at WinExtra I wrote a post about this back in November of 2009 where I talked about this:

The problem is that those EULAs are sneaky and on more than one occasion they have been found to contain more than one type of gotcha. With the exception of a rare breed of computer users who do indeed examine each and every EULA of every piece of software they install most of us just click on I Agree and carry on our merry way. It is only later we find out that maybe we should have read that EULA after all.

In this case however, unlike with things like music, books or movies, this post was about a piece of software you can download that will scan those nasty EULA that we never read. The point was, like Ed’s, that we are very quickly becoming a world were owning something is becoming a figment of our imagination.

If you don’t think so take a moment and read Ed’s post and as he says at the end:

The moral of the story? If you really want to own your music, forget about downloading and buy a CD. You might even save some money compared to a digital download.

Never has caveat emptor meant more.

So, You think you own that software, book, or movie you downloaded eh. Think again. is a post from: The Inquisitr

Today Amazon basically told every single Kindle owner that they don’t really own anything that they buy through the company. As far as Amazon is concerned they have complete say on whether or not you can keep a book you thought you paid for.

Think not?

Well think again because as any Kindle owner who had paid good money for an electronic copy of George Orwell’s 1984 or Animal Farm found out this morning this isn’t the case. This happened because the publisher of the two books decided that they didn’t want to make electronic versions of the books available after all and applied pressure on Amazon to fix the problem.

The fix of course was to delete all downloaded versions of the books from people’s Kindles. Granted their accounts were credited with what the books had cost but that doesn’t change the fact that we’ve just been told we don’t really own anything we buy in digital form – especially when the seller has a direct way to delete that product.

As David Pogue wrote in a post today

This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.

It is this kind of thing that leads me to believe that the more we move into the cloud the less we will actually ever own anything anymore.

And they wonder why piracy lives on is a post from: The Inquisitr

Just a side note – I have been a little lapse in my posting here today mainly because my body figured I’d been burning too many candles from to many ends and as a result I’ve been having to spend much of yesterday and the day before getting some rest. Having heart problems hasn’t helped matters either so my wife put her foot down and said enough. Hopefully things will return to normal tomorrow – in the meantime on with the post I tried to get out earlier.

Well I guess everyone who jumped on the slap Facebook around a little bandwagon is giving themselves all a bunch of fives and pat on the back on how they have through the power of social media caused the giant of Social Media to retreat from their new terms of service. The champagne corks are popping and the obituaries for a truly onerous TOS when the fact is that nothing really has changed one bit. For as bad as their new terms of service may have seemed to be the one that it was spawned from really isn’t all that much better.

The previous TOS; courtesy of Consumerist, and now the one they say they are temporarily returning to until they can come of with something better goes like this

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

Then this was the new and improved TOS that got everyone in an uproar

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service.

The only difference is that the old TOS said that Facebook could only use your – their property as allowed by your privacy setting or until you left the service by deleting your account. Now let’s face it the number of people of people in general probably won’t know what their privacy settings page looked which means for I would estimate 99% of the people using Facebook that the service has free rein with your – their content.

As for being able to delete your account and thereby removing any of your data for Facebook to be able to use is like playing hide ‘n go seek. Just ask Jason Kaneshiro over at webomatica the problems he had trying to delete his account. So again chances are that the vast majority of people will just stop using Facebook but that in turns still  leaves their data there for Facebook to use as it sees fit.

In the end I don’t foresee anything about Facebook’s attempt to get; and keep, control over all the data you put into the system. The only thing that will change is the language used in the TOS. Other than that it will be business as usually – trying to figure out how to make money from all that data of yours err theirs. As Duncan said yesterday

The key with the backflip is to not be fooled. Some are already calling this a user led victory, but the only difference today is that Facebook can’t resell your content if you quit the site, and lets face it, how many people are going to quit the currently most popular social networking site on the planet? The crux of the problem remains: Facebook claiming full rights to do as they please with your content.

The Facebook shell game continues is a post from: The Inquisitr

I see that Facebook it taking a lot of well deserved flack over it’s recent changes to its Terms Of Service (TOS) to the point that baby faced Zuckerberg had to come down from his ivory tower and try to stem the flow of negative comments about the changes. I won’t bother going into all the finer points of what has changed since many of the bigger voices are chipping in their two cents worth – even down to Perez Hilton calling for a boycott of the service (like that will ever happen).

In the process of all this verbiage flying back and forth people like Kara Swisher chimes in with the following little gem

Here’s the key definition of interactive: “mutually or reciprocally active.”

That means once you send something to others, it is out there in cyberspace forever, never ever to return.

And that goes double on social-networking sites, where–let’s be honest–people egregiously overshare and then get all righteous when it is explained to them that sharing means, um, sharing.

As in: You cannot take it back, if you have shared with 476 of your closest “friends,” your bikini shots from Cabo.

The fact is that the moment you sign up to any of the myriad of social media services you can kiss any concept of personal privacy goodbye. That is the trade off you make with you sign on the dotted line with the devil’s many cool little toys you want to play with. Privacy in this instance a thing of the past.

What bothers me is that no one is up in arms over the fact that once you upload anything to Facebook they own that material regardless of what it is forever. All those photos you upload belongs to Facebook, all those messages passed between ‘friends’ now belongs to Facebook and all you expressed opinions belong to Facebook. It is these facts of ownership that is being overshadowed by the bullshit argument about privacy.

From their TOS – just to refresh your memories

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service

While we are busy playing the shell game over the so-called privacy issue Facebook has at the same time etched in stone that for time immemorial it owns all the things you upload and it can do anything it wants with it – to which you have no say what so ever. If it wants to use that really cute picture of your granny in any way it seems fit there is nothing you can do about it. If it wants to use something you have said about a product or service there is nothing you can do to stop them – even if they take what you have said out of context.

We can argue until we are blue in the face about this so-called privacy issue but we will never reach any solid conclusion because how we each define what our own personal levels of privacy will affect how we behave; and on the Internet. What isn’t being talked about is who owns what because like a true magician Facebook – and other social media services – our attention is being misdirection by the big bugaboo called privacy.

The reality is that once you enter the gates of Facebook you own nothing – they do even after you delete your account or more permanently – die. That’s some deal with the devil if you ask me.

Facebook – the sleight of hand shillster is a post from: The Inquisitr