Good grief! Thanks for the warning. Not that I was using AOL anyway, but still - that'll make me think twice about whether there might be such clauses buried in legalese in other services I may use.
Once something is posted, via AIM, email, usenet, livejournal or whatnot I consider it public, so I assume anything I post could be forwarded and used by others. If I had something I thought was worth something(IP rights and such), I would ensure to make some minimal level of security. It wouldn't take much, just enough to ensure that someone has to make a conscous(sp?) choice to break the security.
Nah. Just don't put material out on AIM that you can't afford to have ripped off (i.e. file-transfer your unpublished novel) or publicized (i.e. bragging about getting away with adultery or bank robbery). Same rules for the whole Internet, really.
One thing which jumped out at me when I read the follow-up article was that AOL (in its damage control) said that they never intended to apply those clauses to user-to-user communication. I didn't hear anything about how they had revised or would revise the language to reflect that intent.
I was also amused that AOL's spokesman described how the fact that the controversial language was in a section titled "Content You Post" showed that it wasn't intended to apply to individual communications. Of course, anyone who has read a few legal documents would not be surprised by this quote in the last section: "The section headings used herein are for convenience only and shall not be given any legal import."
...waiving all basic rights is the de facto standard for just about any End User License Agreement anymore. ';P
Seriously though, I recently downloaded a game/module design toolkit (I forget which one it was now), and upon foolishly reading the License Agreement, I grant the parent company the right to use, distribute, publish, and/or edit any and all content I create with their toolkit without any compensation to me in any form.
I deleted the toolkit.
It's scary some of the clauses they just "throw in there".
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2005-03-14 02:22 pm (UTC)No biggie
Date: 2005-03-14 02:35 pm (UTC)Re: No biggie
Date: 2005-03-15 07:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-14 02:47 pm (UTC)How they fix it reveals almost as much as what they did
Date: 2005-03-15 12:22 am (UTC)I was also amused that AOL's spokesman described how the fact that the controversial language was in a section titled "Content You Post" showed that it wasn't intended to apply to individual communications. Of course, anyone who has read a few legal documents would not be surprised by this quote in the last section: "The section headings used herein are for convenience only and shall not be given any legal import."
Haven't you heard?...
Date: 2005-03-15 03:19 am (UTC)Seriously though, I recently downloaded a game/module design toolkit (I forget which one it was now), and upon foolishly reading the License Agreement, I grant the parent company the right to use, distribute, publish, and/or edit any and all content I create with their toolkit without any compensation to me in any form.
I deleted the toolkit.
It's scary some of the clauses they just "throw in there".