Orkut and people who pretend to understand legalese
In case you haven't heard, Tribe is the new Friendster, and Orkut is the new Tribe.
There is a bit of angst floating around about Orkut's Terms of Service and Privacy Poilicy. Everyone seems to agree that the Privacy Policy is reasonable, but they are all up in arms about a clause in the Terms of Service. The Register, in an unsurprisingly reactionary article complains that "All your data belong to Orkut." The complaint is about this clause:
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.
The Register dutifully flames about the terrible atrocity that is this clause while managing to saying nothing about why it's bad, other than "Microsoft did this once, too!"
Let's try reading the legalese… My read is that whatever information you post to Orkut's site, Orkut has permission to copy, modify, and display. They can do so anywhere in the world, and you can't "take it back". They will not pay you for it, and they can transfer this permission to another party. You are free to grant this same permission to other parties.
If you give your information to Orkut or post content on their site, it's not a big leap that they are going to want permission to display it; that's kind of whole point of their site. If you don't give them permission to do so, the site would be pretty damned boring, since nobody would be able to see anyone else's posts. Ths gist of this clause, as I read it, is that they don't want you to sue them for publishing what you post, and I don't really see what's unfair about that.
There are, of course, legitimate concerns about the personal information they collect, and what they do with that information. That they are also bound to abide by their Privacy Policy is the good news. In that document, they state pretty clearly what information they collect, and what they may or may not do with it. This constrains their usage of the above permission into parameters that I'm comfortable with.
Did I miss something?
Comments
No.
Maybe.
My issue with it is if i write something creative like a poem or write an article and use Orkut as a medium of dissemination for such content.
Realistically I don't really care and recognize the words that flow from my fingers as trivial representations of creativity and property.
Still. Why should anything that i type become the property of another person because i use Orkut to communicate? Why do they need to create derivative works from someone conceves. Why should the product of group thought belong to Orkut? ( Granted it is stated that it would be 'non-exclusive' ), why should it belong to orkut? Obviously they need to display it, but do they really need to create derivative works? Do they really need to Sub-license it?
It's not that bad, only bad enough for me to wonder why they need so much.
Posted by: moojester | May 4, 2004 01:25 PM
The Orkut website itself is a derivative work of the works that users enter into the site. So if they can't make derivative works, then they can't make the web site. If they were to add a feature to, for example, create summaries of posts, they'd need permission to modify your work as well. And if they want to allow other people to syndicate the content (eg. RSS), they need permission to sublicense it. Having to update the terms of use in order to add those features and retroactively assign those terms to previosuly posted content would be problematic.
Orkut doesn't end up owning your work, so it doesn't end up belonging to them, though the derived works are theirs.
Yes, this pust a lot of trust in them to respect your content. If you don't want them to be able to use your works in any way they see fit, don't post anything there. But you shouldn't be surprised that they want to be able to do so.
Posted by: Wilfredo Sanchez | May 4, 2004 06:37 PM
I wouldn't call myself surprised.
I'm aware of the argument you posted prior regarding display, distribution and alteration.
Perhaps i'm just unversed in this legalese, when i consider derivative work, i consider it in terms of content, not in format. I suppose i'm really only thinking of a limited case where say someone posts the answer to life the universe and everything and it can be sublicensed / transfered to a publishing company.
Regardless, I would agree that Orkut's Policy doesn't present significant issue.
Posted by: Anonymous | May 17, 2004 03:30 PM