If you use Facebook, then you may want to be careful about what you decide to upload to the site. The company has recently updated its terms of service to give Facebook the right to use anything you upload for whatever it finds necessary forever, regardless of whether or not you delete the content from the site, or even if you delete your entire account.

What that means is that if you upload a video of yourself shotgunning a beer at a party while you're in college, Facebook would be within its legal rights to use that video in a television ad for the company 10 years later, even if you deleted the video and your entire account on graduation day. Even if Facebook didn't want to use the video in its ad campaign, it would also have the right to sublicense the content, so you could find yourself in a beer ad, or better yet the poster child for a campaign against underage drinking.

What you may not realize is that you've always given Facebook the right to do those sorts of things with the content you upload to the site. Previously however the TOS also included a line:

"You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content."

Now it simply states:

"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."

 So, be careful what you upload — you may see it later in ways you didn't expect.

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