GRC News Roundup: Facebook Adopts New Terms of Service, Governing Documents With User Vote

As another week gets ready to end, we round up a few interesting stories from around the GRC newsosphere to keep you updated on the latest happenings. And for our highlight story we step into the world of Web 2.0 where Facebook has undertaken quite a democratic process in its quest to adopt new governing documents including a new Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Backstory: There was a pretty significant backlash a little while back when Facebook made a unilateral change to its now defunct Terms of Service agreement, giving it complete control over user-contributed data even if a user deleted their account. Once Facebook was threatened by the EPIC with a federal complaint to the FTC, CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided to revert to the old Terms of Service before moving forward with its new plan for adopting an altered TOS.

I wonder what would happen if all companies went about changes in such a manner?

Here is the latest:

Facebook to Adopt New Terms of Service

Facebook Inc. said it would move to implement two new governing documents after preliminary results showed that 74.4% of Facebook users who participated in a vote on the new documents supported them.

The social-networking site said it would adopt the new terms of service even though too few users voted to reach the threshold — 30% of users – that it set for the new terms to go into effect.

>>>read the entire article on Facebook adopting new terms of service at the Wall Street Journal (subscription required — Click here for an offer to CCI readers to get The Wall Street Journal for 75% off)

Facebook To Adopt New Terms of Service, Governing Documents

Facebook intends to adopt two new governing documents following a four-day vote on the documents that was open to all Facebook users. Preliminary results indicate that approximately 74.4 percent of Facebook users who voted support the new documents. More than 600,000 users voted on the new Facebook Principles and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, according to a blog post by Ted Ullyot, Facebook’s general counsel.

However, Facebook had said that to be binding 30 percent of Facebook’s 200 million active users would have to participate in the vote. Since voter turnout failed to meet that benchmark, Facebook was only required to consider the new documents as “advisory” guidelines. Regardless, Ullyot says that if an outside auditor confirms the preliminary count, then Facebook will adopt “the Principles and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities as the governing documents for the Facebook site.” Facebook will also consider lowering the 30 percent threshold to make it easier for future votes on the governing documents to be binding.

>>>read the entire article by Ian Paul at PC World on the new governing documents being adopted by Facebook.

Related Resources:

Just 0.32% of Facebook Users Turn Out for TOS Vote — (Info Packets)

In nod to users, Facebook opens vote on terms of service — (ComputerWorld)

Facebook opens the polls for privacy policy vote — (PCWorld)

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Cuomo Wants BofA-Merrill Deal Investigation

New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo wants regulators to take a look at the roles played by the Treasury and Federal Reserve in pushing the merger between Bank of America and Merrill Lynch last year, according to the Journal. Cuomo yesterday sent a series of documents to various Washington officials that detail the extensive interactions between federal officials and BofA CEO Ken Lewis in working towards the merger.

>>>read entire article at Directorship.com

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Entellium: A costly lesson in corporate governance

More than $50 million in venture capital down the drain. Over 200 people out of work. And two Internet executives — both fathers — going to federal prison.

That’s the ugly aftermath of Entellium. Last month, former CEO Paul Johnston and former CFO Parrish Jones were sentenced to two and three years in prison, respectively, for inflating revenue figures over a period of four years at the Seattle software company.

>>>read entire article at TechFlash.com

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How Business Schools Have Failed Business

As we try to understand why our economy is so troubled, fingers are increasingly being pointed at the academic institutions that educated those who got us into this mess. What have business schools failed to teach our business leaders and policy makers? There are three profound failures of sound business practices at the root of the economic crisis, and none of them have been adequately addressed by our business schools.

>>>read entire article at WSJ.com

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Two-Thirds of Public Companies Have No Plans to Use XBRL – Despite Mandate Requiring XBRL Use as Early as June 2009

In a national survey of CFOs and senior comptrollers conducted by Grant Thornton LLP, the U.S. member firm of Grant Thornton International Ltd, 64 percent of public companies have no plans to use eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) – despite an SEC mandate requiring XBRL use as early as June 2009 and no later than 2011. While nearly two-thirds (65%) of public companies are familiar with XBRL, only 12 percent actually use it to report their companies’ financial results.

>>>read entire article at EarthTimes.org

Tags: business schools, corporate governance, Facebook, privacy policy, terms of service