orkut and copyright

As you already know, I've been snooping around Orkut.com recently. Lots of potential for goodstuff, but also potential for bad. According to Orkut's Terms of Service: "By submitting, posting or displaying any Materials on or through the orkut.com service, you automatically grant to us a worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicenseable, transferable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to copy, distribute, create derivative works of, publicly perform and display such Materials. That said, our use of your personal information is governed by our Privacy Policy and we will never rent, sell or share your personal information with any third party for marketing purposes without your express permission." Yet according to their FAQ: "orkut.com does not claim any ownership right in the profile or other information that you submit. When you submit content to orkut.com, we use it to display the content on the site and to other members according to your preferences. You may edit, remove or limit the people who can view the content at any time. We may analyze the types of information submitted to determine how our members use the site and how we can improve the orkut system." I'm going to be benevolent and assume that Orkut is establishing the fact that they have the rights to rebroadcast our material within the confines of providing the service, so we can read our own posts and to allow Orkut to backup data, copy it from one server to another, etc. But then why not say so? Orkut needs to reword its Terms of Service. As is, it seems to me that they would have the right to take any photos or text we post, and do what they like to that content without permission and without compensation. e.g. Take lyrics or a novel excerpt posted in a forum, for example, and reprint it in a hardcopy "BEST OF ORKUT" compilation, or scoop photo album pictures and use them elsewhere and in another context. They're already getting some bad press about this, so I hope they smarten up soon. It would, of course, be suicide for them to actually abuse this clause. But from my own experience in the past, I've learned that you can't always assume that companies will be smart instead of stupid. So until Orkut revises their TOS, I'm going to continue to use their service, but be careful of what I post. Rush hour on the subway this morning. Quite the change from the cottage... May 2004 comments: Read Blatherchat | Post in Blatherchat | Livejournal