Do users of online social networking platforms hold the copyright to profiles, lists of friends, and activity streams they create?
A group of activist users sure think so. In September, at a conference in California called to address interoperability issues between social Web sites, four tech industry veteransJoseph Smarr, Marc Canter, Robert Scoble, and Michael Arringtonintroduced a manifesto and published it with much fanfare at opensocialweb.org. Their screed reflects widespread annoyance at having to reenter personal information every time a new social service comes along, and concern about how these services are free to do with the content what they please. Titled “A Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web,” the group asserts ownership and control over information posted by users to social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. “I’ve been putting all of my personal data into these Web sites,” says Scoble. “I can’t get it out. They’ve taken control and don’t make it easy to move.”
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