AOL Wants It All
Posted by Andrew Eisner | Monday, March 14, 2005 3:06 PM PT
You may want to think twice about discussing that hot new product idea or even your hot date on AIM these days. In case you hadn't noticed, AOL has revised its privacy policy or should I say
unprivacy policy. (Thanks to Dan Hugo, self-employed software architect, for the tip on this one.)
Here's an excerpt from the AIM
Terms of Service concerning "content you post:"
"...by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium. You waive any right to privacy. You waive any right to inspect or approve uses of the Content or to be compensated for any such uses."
In other words, once it's up on AIM, it's fair game. Personally, I think AOL should be careful about pushing this envelope. It's not as if there aren't alternatives. I'm told that there are encrypted chat services like
Jabber and a new one from
Skype that appear to have more respect for your online privacy.
On the other hand, AOL is welcome to all the AIM "want to have lunch?," brb's, and lol's they get from me.
The sad part is that your typical AIM user either doesn't want to read the ToS, or doesn't care either way. Then you have AOL themselves, backpeddling as fast as they can these past two days or so to try to put out this fire by claiming the ToS doesn't apply to private communications... well, they sure didn't make a big deal of the ToS when they changed it last month! They should look into fire prevention next time...
The downside of a Jabber or Skype replacement is that it takes two to tango. Getting your AIM-using friend or colleague to install new software and effectively start over can be tricky. The same goes for encrypted AIM sessions.
Time to bust out the string and dixie cups.
The statement "to be compensated for any such uses" is revealing. Is AOL-Time Warner so hard up for revenue they're skimming IM chat sessions for ideas, clever phrases, etc? What does this say about the folks who work there, if they aren't as clever as IM'ers on generating money for the company? Ridiculous.
I don't know.. It sounds like AOL is protecting itself. I think it is easier for the AOL lawyers to put a disclaimer in the TOS that says it's not a 100 percent private... I don't believe for a second AOL is going to re-producing my AIM chat session about my dog's stool to anyone.
Think about ToS for e-mail, VoIP, or other communications tools... I don't have the time...(and god bless PC World for reading the ToS) but if you read the TOS of many many programs I bet you $100 that they basically promise nothing in terms of privacy. More disturbing is general software that says in its TOS that the software you install could destroy your PC and you can't hold the software maker liable..
A TOS is written by lawyers for lawyers...
The only surprise here ? Not that AOL did something like this first, nor that it was done period.
Am only surprised it took this long.......And wondering when the 'email data mining' will start on the free services.
.....or has it ?
This is why i do not use aol or aim on my new xp computer.