Facebook Copyright Hoax Doing The Rounds Again, Please Don't Fall For It

There's A Facebook Hoax Going Around, Please Don't Fall For It

It's that time of year again, the time when your Facebook feed is filled with friends ranting in uncharacteristically legal language.

Yup, the copyright hoax is back again.

Posts purporting to offer copyright protection for a user's posts and photos simply by copying and pasting a couple of paragraphs of text as a status update are once again rampant.

But don't fall for it, it's all rubbish - and it happens so often it's amazing people keep falling for it.

Typically the post reads...

"In response to the new Facebook guidelines, I hereby declare that my copyright is attached to all of my personal details, illustrations, comics, paintings, professional photos and videos, etc. (as a result of the Berner Convention). For commercial use of the above my written consent is needed at all times!"

The message continues on to say that users can copy and paste the text and post it to their wall, which "will place them under protection of copyright laws."

"If you do not publish a statement at least once," the text warns, "you will be tacitly allowing the use of elements such as your photos as well as the information contained in your profile status updates."

But there are no new copyright guidelines and there is no such thing as the Berner Convention.

Facebook have previously said of the hoax: "As outlined in our terms, the people who use Facebook own all of the content and information they post on Facebook, and they can control how it is shared through their privacy and application settings," Andrew Noyes, a Facebook spokesman, wrote in an email. "Under our terms, you grant Facebook permission to use, distribute, and share the things you post, subject to the terms and applicable privacy settings."

Similar messages have gone viral in the past and have become so common that Facebook actually posted a message to its wall in June saying they weren't true. Snopes, a fact-checking site that debunks online rumors, called it "false" in June.

It's the same one that surfaced in 2012.

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