You may have noticed a trend on Facebook in the past few days where your Friends are posting a status update claiming they hold the rights to all of their content on Facebook. This is in response to privacy changes by Facebook. Sorry, this “declaration of rights” does you no good. If you accepted the terms and conditions of Facebook (if you have an account or continue to hold an account, then you are accepting their terms) this status update will do nothing to change that.
Exactly what are you agreeing to? From Facebook’s Terms:
For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.
Simply putting a statement up saying you own the rights doesn’t do you any good nor does it actually protect your content or privacy. It is up to you to be smart about what you post and use your privacy and application settings to protect your privacy. Avoid a flood of comments pointing out this is fake and do not post this update.
Also, the “Berner Convention” really does not help you here since what they intended to mention was the “Berne Convention“. (Still does not apply)