[Infowarrior] - Facebook To Adopt New Governing Documents

[Richard Forno]

Facebook To Adopt New Governing Documents

Ian Paul

Apr 24, 2009 11:22 am

http://www.pcworld.com/article/163802/facebook_to_adopt_new_governing_documents.html

Facebook intends to adopt two new governing documents following a four- 
day vote on the documents that was open to all Facebook users.  
Preliminary results indicate that approximately 74.4 percent of  
Facebook users who voted support the new documents. More than 600,000  
users voted on the new Facebook Principles and Statement of Rights and  
Responsibilities, according to a blog post by Ted Ullyot, Facebook's  
general counsel.

Not binding, but we'll adopt anyway

However, Facebook had said that for the vote to be binding, 30 percent  
of Facebook's 200 million active users would have to participate.  
Since voter turnout failed to meet that benchmark, Facebook was  
required only to consider the new documents as "advisory" guidelines.  
Regardless, Ullyot says that if an outside auditor confirms the  
preliminary count, then Facebook will adopt "the Principles and  
Statement of Rights and Responsibilities as the governing documents  
for the Facebook site." Facebook will also consider lowering the 30  
percent threshold to make it easier for future votes on the governing  
documents to be binding.

User Backlash

The new Facebook Principles and the Statement of Rights and  
Responsibilities were developed to calm a user revolt over a change to  
Facebook's Terms of Service in February. The backlash came after the  
Consumerist Website published a blog alleging the now-defunct TOS gave  
Facebook complete control over user-contributed data, such as photos  
and videos, even if a user deleted her or his account and left the  
service.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg tried to confront those allegations by  
explaining the site's rationale for the new TOS, but quickly  
backtracked after the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)  
threatened to launch a federal complaint with the Federal Trade  
Commission over the new TOS. Facebook then reverted to its old TOS  
before presenting the two new governing documents to Facebook users  
for a 30-day review period. The review process ended on March 29 and  
the vote on the new documents began on April 20 and closed after four  
days of voting on Thursday morning at 11:59 AM PDT.

Third-party support

Despite the low voter turnout, Ullyot believes the documents satisfy  
the privacy concerns raised in February. Ullyot also said the new  
governing documents have wide support of "informed third parties" and  
previous critics of Facebook's old TOS, including the Consumerist;  
Jonathan Zittrain, co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center for  
Internet & Society; and Julius Harper and Anne Kathrine Petteroe, co- 
founders of the Facebook group People Against the New Terms of  
Service, which Ullyot calls "the first and largest Facebook group  
against the previous change to the terms." Harper and Petteroe now  
oversee the group Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsbilities along  
with three Facebook employees, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

EPIC Battle

EPIC has not released a statement on Facebook's decision to adopt the  
two governing documents, and the advocacy group was not available for  
comment at the time of this writing. When Facebook announced in  
February that it would introduce the two governing documents, EPIC  
executive director Mark Rotenberg said EPIC supported "the effort to  
establish a 'principles' and also a statement of rights and  
responsibilities."

Any future changes to Facebook's new governing documents will require  
a process of ratification with periods of notification, public  
comments followed by a member-wide vote.