License-Wary and Weary

I'm slowly becoming a greater part of the online networking community with my participation in the Austin Chronicle Personals, Yahoo Personals (under the name and title of Sarcastomatic and "Music Has a Right to Children"), Friendster, and shortly I'll be joining MySpace at the urging of a few folks on Friendster.

The pull of such communities is the content created by the people within them. Without that, there is nothing. So I guess that's why those companies value this content so highly they include this language in their license agreements, Terms and Conditions, and policies.

Spring Street Networks TOS

You alone are responsible for any materials you post or make available on or through the SSN Sites or any Partner Personals Areas, including but not limited to message board posts, chat participation, homepages, personal profiles and member profiles. Additionally, you alone are responsible for the consequences of any content you post or otherwise make available on or through the SSN Sites or any Partner Personals Areas. By submitting or otherwise making available materials on or through the SSN Sites or any Partner Personals Areas, you are representing that you are the owner of such materials, or are submitting the materials with the express consent of the owner.

[...]

By submitting or otherwise making available materials to public areas of any SSN Site or any Partner Personals Area, you agree that SSN and each Partner (including their respective agents, affiliates, licensors and service providers (collectively, “Third Party Providers”) will at all times maintain a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide, fully paid, assignable right and license to reproduce, repurpose, use, store, modify, edit, distribute or make available any portion or portions of such materials as they see fit in any medium, now known or hereafter developed, for any purpose whatsoever, subject only to the terms set forth in these Terms of Service. While not limiting the rights under foregoing sentence, SSN and the Partners each reserve the right to excerpt, store, use or distribute, in whole or in part, any content, text, or images contained in your personal profiles or posted by you on any public areas maintained within the SSN Sites and/or the Partner Personals Areas, along with your screen name or any Personals nickname you select, and feature them in ads, supplements and content pages in any print publications owned, controlled or otherwise maintained by SSN or any Partner.

Yahoo! Terms of Service

You understand that all information, data, text, software, music, sound, photographs, graphics, video, messages or other materials ("Content"), whether publicly posted or privately transmitted, are the sole responsibility of the person from which such Content originated. This means that you, and not Yahoo!, are entirely responsible for all Content that you upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available via the Service. Yahoo! does not control the Content posted via the Service and, as such, does not guarantee the accuracy, integrity or quality of such Content. You understand that by using the Service, you may be exposed to Content that is offensive, indecent or objectionable. Under no circumstances will Yahoo! be liable in any way for any Content, including, but not limited to, for any errors or omissions in any Content, or for any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of the use of any Content posted, emailed, transmitted or otherwise made available via the Service.

[...]

You agree that you must evaluate, and bear all risks associated with, the use of any Content, including any reliance on the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of such Content.

[...]

Yahoo! does not claim ownership of Content you submit or make available for inclusion on the Service. However, with respect to Content you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service, you grant Yahoo! the following world-wide, royalty free and non-exclusive license(s), as applicable...[more legalese]

Friendster Terms of Service Agreement

You are solely responsible for the Content that you publish or display (hereinafter, "post") on the Service, or transmit to other Members.

By posting Content to any public area of Friendster, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to Friendster an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, fully paid, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, and distribute such information and content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

MySpace.com Terms of Use Agreement

You are solely responsible for the Content that you publish or display (hereinafter, "post") on the Service or any material or information that you transmit to other Members. c. By posting Content on any public area of MySpace.com, you automatically grant as well as represent and warrant that you have the right to grant to MySpace.com, an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, fully paid, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, and distribute such information and content to MySpace.com and that MySpace.com has the right to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.

Eery similarities among all four, eh?

An obvious legitimate reason for terms such as these is for the legal rebroadcast of reprinting of your comments elsewhere on the computer system so others can read them. But an "irrevocable," "non-exclusive," and "world-wide" license to "any portion or portions of such materials" "for any purpose whatsoever"?

It's a little humbling to read terms like these and then consider the vast troves of content a company like Friendster legally owns and can do almost whatever it wants with. Of course, these companies distance themselves as far as they can from the negative implications from free-esque market discussion with the talk about the content producers being solely responsible for their content.

People, read your TOSs, licenses, and agreements. It doesn't take as long as you may think and sometimes you learn some pretty surprising things.

Posted by Drizzten at October 15, 2003 03:06 AM