Verba @ McAWilliams.com

This morning question came up due to a tweet yesterday from David Maybury about the EULA or terms and conditions when downloading Googles much hyped “Chrome” browser, which was released on Tuesday. Basically the wording in the EULA stated that,

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

This is also the case with Facebook and as I found out in todays answers not uncommon in other places aswell.

So my question was quite simply “Following on from the revelations in Google Chromes terms and conditions, should we be paying more attention to what we sign up to, Facebook for instance also own everything we put up even photos and can use them as they wish”

GrooveMachine was first up with a rather startled “Facebook does that? eek! whats happening to the web?” Faceman101 was also very quick to reply and obviously a bit shocked by the question “Whats in chromes t&c’s”

Davidmaybury was next in “MySpace tried it last year with uploaded music content but had to change the wording eventually” Faceman101 I think knew what answer was coming because as quick as his first tweet arrived he said “the best way to see how open to abuse you are on Facebook is to try and delete your account nothing is deleted”

I wanted to make sure to anyone outside of Ireland that in relation to Facebook what I was talking about was in Ireland, I know in the UK there was uproar over it and the wording was amended, but GrooveMachine went and checked the US Facebook EULA and tweeted “looks to be the same in the US t&c’s, good to know”

I knew at this point I had hit a nerve and was thrilled these companies should not be allowed do this, Elfinamsterdam joined in at this stage with “I think its naive to believe that if you put something in the public domain that it remains private property” this view was also backed up by question time veteran Topgold who said “You cede a certain amount of privacy once you start using the internet as your workspace and play area” both of which are very valid points, but forgetting about privacy, I want to retain the rights to things I may post up on my blog or Facebook or anything for that matter.

Chrismehigan decided to get his 2 cents out there “companies should be more careful about terms they push to consumers - lot of protection in Europe on this. Adobe ran into trouble with this recently and DID change the EULA to address consumer concerns, Facebook have a terrible policy and YouTube is also quite demanding I believe, for creative professionals it is very important. Strictly speaking they are creating derivative works of your items which they can then use - but it could be drafted better”

Elfinamsterdam added “I agree it SHOULD be the case that you own the intellectual property, but in reality, do you think taht is the case? when it resides on a server you do not control, and its in the public domain. When software exists to assist if someone wants to claim it as their own. I don’t agree that it should be this way, it just seems to be that we must see it this way to change it. I think we should say no, but I think we should understand that when you give a corporation access to your material really you relinquish your full control over it. Its not locked inside your head and it resides on that corps server. Its not utopia”

Icedcoffee was late to arrive and reiterated what David had said with “isn’t it the same with MySpace and music - they can do what they want with it?”

Topgold finished off the discussion with “A lot of people in my first year media writing place their faith in Bebo!”

This discussion I hope will continue, I feel we only touched the tip of the iceberg this morning. This afternoon it was revealed that Google have in fact amended their terms accordingly, obviously people power won out once again, which is a great thing.

Thanks again to everybody who took part in today’s discussion, these remember are views, and should be treated as such.

LINKS

Chrome EULA before the amend - http://url.ie/nze
MySpace EULA - http://url.ie/o0w
Adobe EULA issues - http://snipurl.com/3mu61
Topgolds take on Google Chromes EULA - http://url.ie/o15

Stumble It! Digg this Del.icio.us Google Technorati Reddit