By Geoff Livingston, Principal & Co-Founder, Zoetica

Facebook and to a lesser extent Twitter and LinkedIn have become the interstates of the social web. Nonprofits that want to connect with their constituents are almost obliged to participate on these networks. Causes and associations provide status updates on the networks, post links, publish content via tools like Facebook Notes, groups on Linked In and Facebook, and ask questions on all of the services.

Yet, while the social networks hold tremendous benefit for nonprofits that successfully engage their stakeholders, there are also dangers. Specifically, the surrendering of licenses to use nonprofits' content as each network sees fit. While these legal disclaimers are to empower other users to share content, each network uses content differently.

Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities states, "...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."

Twitter's terms of service are similar in nature: "By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed)." Further on the Twitter terms say, "Such additional uses by Twitter, or other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Twitter, may be made with no compensation paid to you with respect to the Content that you submit, post, transmit or otherwise make available through the Services."

And finally the LinkedIn User Agreement say, "You grant LinkedIn a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual, unlimited, assignable, sublicenseable, fully paid up and royalty-free right to us to copy, prepare derivative works of, improve, distribute, publish, remove, retain, add, process, analyze, use and commercialize, in any way now known or in the future discovered, any information you provide, directly or indirectly to LinkedIn, including but not limited to any user generated content, ideas, concepts, techniques or data to the services, you submit to LinkedIn, without any further consent, notice and/or compensation to you or to any third parties."

If your cause uses content as a means to communicate with donors, volunteers or other stakeholders, these statements present significant issues. It’s clear that protecting intellectual property (IP) is virtually impossible on the major social networks. Consider the many data abuses Facebook has been embroiled in.

While the networks claim to offer IP protections, they are clearly soft on enforcement. For individuals to hold offenders responsible for using your copyrighted content without permission would take legal intervention. All in all, your nonprofit's content is not safe on these networks.

Publishing updates and content on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter is a necessary action in today's social web. But if your nonprofit values its intellectual property, use secondary services such as a privately hosted blog, a video site or a photo site like Flickr with strong intellectual property protection. Then publish on the social networks by linking back to the content, increasing your chances of protecting copyright.

Geoff Livingston is a co-founder of Zoetica, and author of the forthcoming Welcome to the Fifth Estate, a book about creating and sustaining a winning social media strategy.