CHRISTIAN FUCHS - ICT&S - Universität Salzburg

Christian Fuchs: Social Networking Sites and the Surveillance Societylevel, number 14 in Germany, number 12 in Austria, and number 18 in Switzerland(alexa.com, accessed on October 29, 2008). The three-month average share of globalInternet users who use MySpace is 6.49% (alexa.com, accessed on October 28, 2008).In 2007, MySpace had more unique visitors than Facebook, but in 2008 Facebookoutstripped MySpace (unique visitors of MySpace in June 2008: 117 million, Facebook:132 million 18 ) and MySpace no longer was the largest ISNS. The number of uniqueMySpace visitors increased by 3% in the period from June 2007 to June 2008 (June2007: 114 million) 19 . Facebook makes profits of approximately 250-500 million US$per year 20 .In summer 2006, British socialist folk singer Billy Bragg discussed publicly thatMySpace’s terms of use allow them to sell and reuse artists’ songs that are uploaded toMySpace. The specific passage read:"You hereby grant to MySpace.com a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free,worldwide license (with the right to sublicense through unlimited levels ofsublicensees) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publiclydisplay, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute such Content on and through theServices".MySpace reacted and amended the specific passage so that reuse and reselling is notallowed:“MySpace does not claim any ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos,video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, applications, or any othermaterials (collectively, ‘Content’) that you post on or through the MySpaceServices. After posting your Content to the MySpace Services, you continue toretain any such rights that you may have in your Content, subject to the limitedlicense herein. By displaying or publishing (‘posting’) any Content on or throughthe MySpace Services, you hereby grant to MySpace a limited license to use,modify, delete from, add to, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, anddistribute such Content solely on or through the MySpace Services, includingwithout limitation distributing part or all of the MySpace Website in any mediaformats and through any media channels, except Content marked ‘private’ will notbe distributed outside the MySpace Website. This limited license does not grantMySpace the right to sell or otherwise distribute your Content outside of theMySpace Services. After you remove your Content from the MySpace Website wewill cease distribution as soon as practicable, and at such time when distributionceases, the license will terminate. If after we have distributed your Contentoutside the MySpace Website you change the Content’s privacy setting to“private,” we will cease distribution of such ‘private’ Content outside the MySpaceWebsite as soon as practicable after you make the change” (MySpace Terms ofUse, §6.1, accessed on November 3, 2008).18 http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2396, accessed on October 28, 2008.19 http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2396, accessed on October 28, 2008.20 http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main/myspace.com, accessed on October 28, 2008.41