Facebook backs off changes to terms of service

— -- Facebook founder and CEO Marc Zuckerberg reverted to the social networking site's old "terms of use" agreement Tuesday night, undoing a legal change that implied the site might own its members' information forever.

"Over the past couple of days, we received a lot of questions and comments about the changes and what they mean for people and their information," says Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a post on Facebook's official blog. "Based on this feedback, we have decided to return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised."

Facebook recently changed its terms of use, the legal language found at the bottom of many websites, causing an uproar among members who feared losing control of data they posted to the site. Zuckerberg apologized for the confusion surrounding the revised terms, and indicated Facebook still plans to update the terms moving forward, a process the company expects to be completed in the next few weeks.

"We think that a lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective so we don't plan to leave it there for long," he wrote. "Our next version will be a substantial revision from where we are now. It will reflect the principles ... around how people share and control their information, and it will be written clearly in langauge everyone can understand. Since this will be the governing document that we all live by, Facebook users will have a lot of input in crafting these issues."

Facebook has also created a Bill of Rights and Responsibilties Group, where members can begin posting questions and comments. By early Wednesday, the group had nearly 25,000 members (Facebook itself has 175 million members.)

The controversy exploded Sunday after a consumer rights advocacy blog, The Consumerist, flagged a change earlier this month to Facebook's terms of use agreement.

Facebook removed language that said if you remove anything you've posted to Facebook, the company relinquished any rights to it with the exception of keeping an archival copy.