iPhoto versus Picasa II [Facebook’s TOS]

Remember that response I penned to Mashable’s Jennifer van Grove last month? She had written a review of the new iPhoto release that ranked it higher than the new Picasa – and it hinged on the fact that the new iPhoto had the capability to upload to Facebook (and this justified the $29 pricetag).

Today, the Consumerist shows us why Picasa is still a much more superior option. The subject matter is the Facebook Terms of Service, which has been slightly modified to grant them use of all content you upload to the system… in perpetuity… regardless of whether you close the account or not.

Here are the salient bits:

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.

That’s the same as the old TOS, but this bit was removed from the end:

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.

This is the pertinent part of the Picasa TOS:

9.4 Other than the limited license set forth in Section 11, Google acknowledges and agrees that it obtains no right, title or interest from you (or your licensors) under these Terms in or to any Content that you submit, post, transmit or display on, or through, the Services, including any intellectual property rights which subsist in that Content (whether those rights happen to be registered or not, and wherever in the world those rights may exist). Unless you have agreed otherwise in writing with Google, you agree that you are responsible for protecting and enforcing those rights and that Google has no obligation to do so on your behalf.

UPDATE: Amanda French did a comparative analysis of Facebook’s TOS to MySpace, Yahoo, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google/Picasa. Look here.