Joshua Penix wrote:
Neil Schneider wrote:
American blogger Amy Gahran, owner of the blog Contentious, has
discovered
clauses in the newly revised AOL contract for its "free" instant
messenger service
(AIM) that claims "compilation and derivative rights" to all content
and ideas
discussed or entered on the service. AOL's right is "irrevocable and
in perpetuity".
You now also waive the right to privacy in using the service.
If bloggers like Amy want to be considered journalists they should try
actually investigating the issue before being so Contentious.
If she'd done that, she'd have found that:
1) The terms of service are not newly revised, they date back to
February of 2004.
2) They refer to posts on AIM's public message boards.
3) AIM's privacy policy explicitly states "AOL does not read your
private online communications when you use any of the communication
tools offered as AIM Products."
Granted, the word "post" is used in a somewhat vague manner, but again
a journalist, or at least someone who was interested in actually
reporting as opposed to drumming up FUD, would have contacted AOL
while researching the issue.
I Agree. Furthermore, if she had bothered to read the terms of service
agreements on any number of other forum-type message boards, she would
have found a similar clause in most of them. This has been common
practice almost since their inception. http://www.fool.com comes to
mind. Big spat was created over this a few years ago when some of the
forum members tried to charge royalties when www.fool.com used original
material from forum posters in their books on investing. A number of the
posters were intending to use this stuff in books or published articles
of their own, only to find that they'd givien away the rights to it by
posting it to the boards. Apparently, bloggers are wont to read even the
contracts they agree to themselves. I realize that most of us just
reflexively agree to these things, but this just points out how
dangerous an indulgence that could be.
Robert Donovan
--
[email protected]
http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
