Do mi konsideris krei konton cxe Facebook. Tamen mi nun havas dubojn post kiam mi legis tion kion oni konsentu antaux ol rajti uzi gxin ( http://www.facebook.com/terms.php ):
So I was considering setting up a Facebook account. But then I read the user agreement (at Read more... )
Why? The reason for the first example is obvious. They don't want the headache of having to constantly police for copyright infringement, so they give themselves the ability to just terminate your account if there are complaints. The second example is a little trickier. Let's say Facebook licenses their service to a phone company (which I believe they do), so that the company's phones can provide a sweet interface to the Facebook and allow customers/users to keep in touch with their friends. Money is changing hands and that could be considered a commercial use of the content you posted.
The other observation is that LiveJournal's TOS provides a much less explicit license for use of your material.
"XIV. 4. LiveJournal reserves the right, without limitation except by law, to serve any user Content on the web, through the downloadable clients and otherwise. LiveJournal also reserves the right, without limitation, to resell any portion of a user's LiveJournal back to that individual;"
I didn't notice anything that said what would happen to your content when the account was terminated. They simply say that you might lose the content.
They also have clauses that make any inappropriate postings the responsibility of the user.
So the difference here is that Facebook, perhaps due to their partnerships with phone and other companies and perhaps due to their much larger user base, have a much more explicit TOS to protect themselves.
Anyway, has already been pointed out, nobody is twisting your arm and demanding that you post any material that you do not wish to.
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> so that the company's phones can provide a sweet interface to the Facebook and allow
> customers/users to keep in touch with their friends. Money is changing hands and that
> could be considered a commercial use of the content you posted.
You make a good point here. But not everthing in there is so easy to explain. The thing about being able to publicly perform the content, for example. With a strech of the imagination, one could argue that text-to-speach software is a "performance" of the content that has a legitimate use for the blind. The bit about translation could allow them to incorporate Babelfish. And the bit about the derivitive work could allow them to paraphrase excerpts and fictionalize users before using them in advertising.
> a much more explicit TOS to protect themselves.
Maybe you've honed in on why the Terms make me so uncomfortable. The Company has done such a good job protecting itself that it seems that a User wouldn't have any recourse at all against them.
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