Last week’s headlines regarding Facebook (see post below) really seemed to raise the awareness of Facebook users about its Terms of Use. The troubling reality that many Facebook users haven’t read its Terms of Use illustrates the all too common practice of website users not reading the Terms of Use of websites they visit.
Website Terms of Use are important to read, especially if you’re then going to post information on or through the website. If you’re a Facebook user, read its Terms of Use to determine if you actually agree to them. If not, you may want to reconsider continuing to be a Facebook user or you may want to simply refrain from posting content that you don’t want to fall under the scope of its Terms of Use.
If your business has a website, check to see if it has a comprehensive Terms of Use document that’s been customized accordingly. Terms of Use are vital documents for websites because they set out the ground rules regarding – among other things – the ownership of content, licence rights, use of the website by minors, user submissions/postings and intellectual property rights. They are intended to serve as legally binding contracts between website operators and users, so they’re pretty important!
Facebook may have suffered a public relations setback last week, but for a commercial enterprise it was on the right path when it reviewed and tried to customize its Terms of Use to meet its business objectives. All businesses that have websites should review and, if necessary, modify their Terms of Use on a regular basis.
I read them every now and then, but I usually skip to the bottom first to see if it allows the site to modify the terms without consent or notification. If yes anything else said is generally moot and it comes down to how much I trust the company. Unfortunately those modification and notification clauses are nearly ubiquitous.
Good point. For myself, I always question whether that sort of clause would even be enforceable. It’s tough to argue that both parties agreed to the new terms unilaterally made at a later date by one party.
However, those terms even show up in a lot of credit card and banking agreements now.