A Very Strong Word Of Warning

I wanted to issue a very strong word of warning regarding the Social Networks Facebook and Myspace. They are fantastic sites that continue to bring me in a lot of traffic each day and I've spend months building them up, adding friends, adding content and videos etc.

My Myspace account got deleted about a month ago, and I've had several warnings about my Facebook account.

You need to be very careful what type of content you upload to your Social Network sites. MAKE SURE you READ the TERMS AND CONDITIONS of the sites and adhere to them.

They are VERY STRICT if you violate any of the terms by mistake. Myspace will close your account in an instant and Facebook will give you a couple of warnings.

Hello,

We have removed your video entitled "My Mind Movie – Please Comment " uploaded at 4:30am October 7th, 2008. We did this because we learned that your video might include copyrighted material owned by a third party, such as a video clip or background audio.

If you are the copyright owner, or have permission from the rights holder to upload and distribute this material on Facebook, you may file a counter notice of alleged infringement by following the link below.

Please note that if you re-upload this video without filing a counter notice, or if you upload another video that infringes on the rights of a third party, our system will again remove the content. This could cause your access to the Facebook Video application to be disabled, or your Facebook account to be disabled.

To file a counter notice:
File a Counter Notification

For any other questions, view our Help page.

The Facebook Team

I'm not going to appeal as my MindMovie contains a Queen audio track over the song and a photo of Anthony Robbins in the video. I didn't think I was violating the terms of service.

I'm fairly sure this is the reason my Myspace account got deleted also, although I'm not 100% sure of it.

When I uploaded the video to Youtube, they also gave me a warning, but allowed the video to continue to be hosted on their site. They made sure I knew that I'd uploaded something that wasn't mine and to be careful in the future. Because Youtube allowed me to use it on their site, I assumed that it was ok to use on Facebook and Myspace. (Don't Assume Gavin!!! – Assume makes and Ass out of U and Me)

So, only upload your own content, with no copyright audio or images in the video's or photos. I must admit that I did already know this but I didn't think such a small one off video/ audio would cause me so much trouble.

Be very careful as you don't want to lose all the hard work you've put into building up your Facebook, Myspace and Youtube accounts.

I've learned the hard lesson from Myspace so hopefully you don't have to! I've set up another Myspace account now and fortunately I'd backed up my whole Myspace profile just incase it got deleted

If you've had a similar experience in the past, please let me know your story in the comments below…