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NZ's Largest ISP Owns Your Work
NZKiwi writes "New Zealand's Largest ISP has quietly introduced a new clause into their TOS; basically if it goes through their servers, they own it, and can exploit it as they see fit.
Have a look at their TOS, it's under section 4 "Our Use of Your Intellectual Property" I think it's time I shopped for a new ISP."
is owned and brought to you by Xtra! Redistribution is prohibited.
Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
WTF!!!!! I cannot believe they think that that clause is in any way shape or form is ok. Maybe I'm overreacting, but, oh wait I'm not.
and in related news, several us corporations declare open war on NZ, in an attempt to trump Xtra's 'all your work are belong to us' scheme. no really folks, how come no one in their legal department saw this as illegal(internet provider would be international, so only international trade laws would be used, thus pissing off US Comp.) oh well, I use covad.net and love them. Maybe they should expand?
I suggest someone send this to the attention of some universities with researchers who use that ISP. They will not be happy with changes to agreements that violate agreements their employees already have with them.
-Sean
Is any of that enforceable? If it came to a law suit, what courts would uphold this clause? Honestly, I don't know the answer. But surely at least one lawyer in Xtra knows that this is an abusive clause. Whatever happened to "...the above in no way effects your statutory rights..."?
Astounding stuff...
Éibhear
The thing says that they own things you post, save, upload to, and communicate on their systems. It isn't clear to me whether this includes things that pass through their routers and go onto the Internet. It isn't staying on their system in that scenario. Do any lawyers and armchair analysists have any thoughts on this?
Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
That is some very scary stuff.
Consider this example: Some wacky hillbilly suddenly decides that, if you use the road that happens to pass through one of his plots of land, you, your wife, your car, and all your belongings are suddenly his to do as he sees fit, and thus proceeds to rob you blind. Why should this be any more legal than what these people are claiming?
If something is mine, regardless of what the fuck I choose to do with it, then you have no right to claim it for your own perverted uses.
Of course this clause is ridiculous and would never stand up in any decent court, but the problem is that if you tell a lie one too many times people, yourself included, will begin to see it as the truth. We cannot sit idly by while things like these are happening all over the place. It's not the first time this happens and if we keep sitting on our collective arse, like we're all so fond of doing, then 1984 will arrive a bit late instead of never.
Personally, there's not much I can do against an ISP on the other side of the world, but I will sure talk to all my friends in NZ to warn them about this and will be advising them to send letters of protest. The snail-mail kind, which is usually taken a bit more seriously.
By placing any content, software or anything else ("Materials") on our Websites or Systems (including posting messages, uploading files, importing data or engaging in any other form of communication), you grant to Xtra a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive, irrevocable, unrestricted, worldwide licence to do the following in respect of the Materials:
* use, copy, sublicence, redistribute, adapt, transmit, publish, delete, edit and/or broadcast, publicly perform or display, and
* sublicence to any third parties the unrestricted right to exercise any of the rights granted.
The above rights you grant to us includes the right to exploit all proprietary rights in any of the Materials including, but not limited to, rights under copyright, trade mark, service mark or patent laws under any jurisdiction worldwide. You expressly waive in favour of Xtra and any other party authorised by Xtra all moral rights and any similar rights in any jurisdiction which you may have or may later acquire in respect of any relevant Materials.
Your reality is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. - Baron Munchausen
my favorite part i think of the entire thing is the statement, "The above rights you grant to us includes the right to exploit all proprietary rights in any of the Materials"
Don't you just love the fact that they openly used "exploit"?
For the personal data I would encrypt it all. The ISP can waste all the money they want to decrypt it.
For everything else this won't work anyway since most of what travels across their lines is not owned by the people accepting the contracts. Most ISP traffic is of the download variety. This means that all those pages, gifs, jpegs, movies, songs, etc are not available to these customers to give. In most countries you can't give or sell what you don't already own.
This seems like a wildly stupid CYA type of move. It seems that claiming ownership to whatever travels your lines could get you in big trouble. Who wants to lay claim to illegal content? It seems safer to claim no responsibility.
The solution, of course, is simple. I will demonstrate:
Email -> PGP (or GPG)
Telnet -> SSH
HTTP -> HTTPS
etc...
Xtra can sell my meaningless bits to whoever they want. Want a copy of my SSL session? Feel free, but I'm not waiting around for you to decrypt it. (Err.... disclaimer: this is a hypothetical; I'm not actually an Xtra customer, though if I was I wouldn't be too worried, between this and some potential issues over legality pointed out by others)
If whatever you are doing cannot be done securely, and is not already being done securely, it deserves to be stolen.
This is the last straw, not to mention the shitty service and helpdesk run-around.
Even if they revoke the clause I am unprepared to continue with an organisation that would do this in the first place.
ARSEHOLES
So much to do, so little bandwidth.
--
Try Mozilla
First of all, not all people at Slashdot have the same opinion on all issues, even IP. For example, I see that you're a registered user.
Now, for example, look at the GNU GPL. It explicitly relies on IP laws (what we used to call "copyright" before the aliens took over) to ensure the enforcement of its terms. Yet, many people involved in GNU oppose IP-enforcement acts such as the DMCA and software patents.
It's not about whether copyright, trademarking, etc. are right. It's a matter of how IP laws should be legislated, what their coverage should be, and who should benefit from them.
In addition, this is a completely different issue -- whether an ISP should be able to claim essentially complete rights to each and every one of your emails, chats on IRC, AIM logs, etc. It's as much a privacy issue as a copyright issue.
Nice troll, though.
Today's Aardvark Daily has plenty to say on this ISP's new Service Terms too and raises some other very interesting (coincidental) issues.
So, since they have all the rights, does that by implication mean they can be prosecuted for any w@rez, ripped CDs or similar?
By uploading them I'm expressly waiving any rights, and the associated responsibilities?
Sounds like an easy way to 'protest'.
/* affect != effect */ void affect(int *thing,int effect) { *thing += effect; }
Since they just claimed ownership of anything passing throug there servers, then those songs i downloaded arent really mine, therefore the RIAA can just attack the isp. Hey, and someone e-mail someone in austraila some child pron, lets nail the isp for owning that too!!!
SO how long can this isp last with NO comercial customers?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
All your Materials are belong to Xtra!
Xtra does not claim ownership of any content or material you provide or make available through the Services ("Customer Material"). However, by placing any Customer Material on our Websites or Systems (including posting messages, uploading files, importing data or engaging in any other form of communication), you grant to Xtra a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive, irrevocable, unrestricted, worldwide licence to do the following in respect of the Customer Materials:
* use, copy, sublicence, redistribute, adapt, transmit, publish, delete, edit and/or broadcast, publicly perform or display, and
* sublicence to any third parties the unrestricted right to exercise any of the rights granted,
in each case for the limited purposes for which you provided or made the Customer Materials available or to enable us and our suppliers to provide the Services.
where it used to say
By placing any content, software or anything else ("Materials") on our Websites or Systems (including posting messages, uploading files, importing data or engaging in any other form of communication), you grant to Xtra a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive, irrevocable, unrestricted, worldwide licence to do the following in respect of the Materials:
* use, copy, sublicence, redistribute, adapt, transmit, publish, delete, edit and/or broadcast, publicly perform or display, and
* sublicence to any third parties the unrestricted right to exercise any of the rights granted.
The above rights you grant to us includes the right to exploit all proprietary rights in any of the Materials including, but not limited to, rights under copyright, trade mark, service mark or patent laws under any jurisdiction worldwide. You expressly waive in favour of Xtra and any other party authorised by Xtra all moral rights and any similar rights in any jurisdiction which you may have or may later acquire in respect of any relevant Materials.
Strange how fast a little publicity changes things
Didn't microsoft try this with MSN/Passport awhile back?
Plus thats not what they are doing, read carefully:
Xtra does not claim ownership of any content or material you provide or make available through the Services ("Customer Material"). However, by placing any Customer Material on our Websites or Systems (including posting messages, uploading files, importing data or engaging in any other form of communication), you grant to Xtra a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive, irrevocable, unrestricted, worldwide licence to do the following in respect of the Customer Materials:
They on;y claim rights to stuff posted to THEIR website forum and stuff.
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
(Don't) Post on or transmit through XXXXX's network any material that is in violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Should a complaint of copyright infringement be asserted to XXXXX from an agent of the claimed copyright holder, XXXXX will require that the claimed infringing material be removed immediately. Should the alleged violator assert that the works are not in violation of copyright, an appeal may be made in writing to the XXXXX Designated Agent specified in the XXXXX Copyright Complaint Policy.
AND
Any violations of the XXXXX Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) may result in XXXXX billing the violator at the rate of $120.00/hr. or $500.00 which ever is greater, for administrative time incurred answering complaints, parsing mail logs, etc. A minimum $500.00 fee per complaint and/or individual piece of material will also be charged, to be paid immediately to XXXXX. Payment of this fee does not waive any other fines of penalties that may be levied by XXXXX or any other state, federal or international organizations.
AND
The XXXXX Internet Acceptable Use Policy prohibits the transmission of copyrighted material over our IP network, or the storage of copyrighted material on our servers.
If you believe that your copyrighted work is being hosted on a XXXXX IP address in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, please follow the procedures outlined below.
So basically, if someone claims they hold the copyright on anything I have stored on the server, I can be sent a giant bill and have my service turned off. I used to have some original songs on my server (copyrighted by me, of course), could I be in violation if I call and report the existence of copyrighted material? Plus, it expressly forbids the transmission of ANY copyrighted work thru them. Which would include the balance of the net. Ironically, they have a copyright 2003 at the bottom of the page, so I could be kicked off at any time, since I have now viewed and copy/pasted the TOC.
Is there a list of ISP TOCs out there? This one was recently changed to include the whole DMCA thing. I'd like to get a feel for what other ISPs are charging their users with.
So does this give xtra the rights to take all names and email addresses of people sent messages and use them for advertising and sell them to others?
sublicence to any third parties the unrestricted right to exercise any of the rights granted
I hope that enough people write that this gets changed! I could see them harvesting every email address that goes through their smtp servers and pop servers and then selling that data.
"with great ownership comes great responsibilties" almost the case here. If they own everything on their servers, they also have to take full responsibilities for it. So if some client uploaded a bunch of kiddie-porn on their servers, they automatically own it, and thus take full responsibility and the client could actually tell the cops, and they would have pay the price... Another client could actually break into their computers, mess everything up, and all they couldn't make him liable for anything. If I understand this correctly, they are simply shooting themselves in the foot... or groin.. or something
If NZ's history is anything like Australia's,
I'm really -not- surprized by this report.
There really needs to be a move -towards-
acting in accordance with the people's
wishes, eg more like Switzerland & Sweden do.
But, no... Past is prologue... & that past
is one that involves colonialization by
Britain... which positioned the people
as free to bow to the Royal Family, but
not much else, as far as I can see...
The bigger island country can't even decide
to become a republic, let alone act rationally
when invited to send troops to Iraq this year.
Australia's Telstra wanted to charge people
for -receiving- SMS messages (& may do now),
& may get away with this spamer's delight.
'Why should -your- IP rights not belong to us'
might be a logical next step to such an
outrageous on from Telstra... which is STILL
receiving well over 90% of the market's profits,
long after competition was to arrive in Oz...
No, things are ong overdue for change in both
island countries, but whoever openly supports
such change stands more chance of losing out,
unless they are employed by the gov't's ABC.
It would seem that if anyone puts up illegal material than the ISP could also be sued, since they now are saying (essentially, despite what the new revised terms say) that they own the content. And after all, if you own a copyright, would you prefer to go after an ISP with lots of money, or a college student who can only afford 98 billion dollars... err, I mean, nevermind, you know what I mean. :)
--David
Somebody upload WinXP to their servers and see how long they can act like they own it.
I stil lthink of new zeland and aus as interchangable.
You can just find a different ISP
Yeah, and pay the six-figure setup fee including relocation of subscriber's family.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It would be much easier to just change ISPs.
Even with a six-figure setup fee to relocate the family to an area serviced by the other ISP?
Will I retire or break 10K?
go up a few lines:
"only use our Services for lawful purposes, and not use them [...] to post, upload or transmit to or by means of the Services, any information or materials:
.
.
in connection with surveys, contests, pyramid schemes, chain letters, junk email, spamming or any duplicative or unsolicited messages (commercial or otherwise)."
Does this mean I'm not allowed to talk about SPAM, or send an unsubscribe request to a spammer? What about debian's 'Popularity' package, that's a survey isn't it.
I can't even forward complaints about the latest Nigerin 419 scam to the proper authority.
Real SUV's don't have cupholders
It's 5:42 A.M., do you know where your stack pointer is?
Setup a warez, bootleg movie, and mp3 server on Xtra. While you're at it, add the anarchists cookbook recipes for napalm, etc. Then add some nazi pictures, copyrighted images, kiddie porn, and church of scientology info on the server. ADd some docs. from the US patent office. Then blow the whistle on them, and sit back and watch the fireworks.
Many years ago when broadband was new to the home user I was fortunate to be living in a town where the local community pioneered in the technology. Since they were one of the first to deliver broadband to private users they had some initial problems. They couldn't get enough qualified engineers to keep the network running smoothly since the demand was a lot higher then they expected. This led to a poor quality of service and I (and others) who were there first got sick of the treatment they gave us when we came with suggestion on how to improve the efficiency. After a number of months with almost daily interruptions on the connection I thought it was time to pay back. :)
I started a campaign of "computer warfare". I used my knowledge to bring their systems down to that degree that I was the only one beeing able to use it. I hogged the bandwidth. Sent out false BootP packets put up a DHCP server so that other users couldn't get a genuine IP and a lot more.
They searched their networks for errors (since they already knew they had problems they didn't suspect anyone was intentionally causing problems for them) and after about 3 months the came up with a solution. Kick me out and all will be ok.
Well... They kicked me out and all wasn't ok. They still had problems with their network. (Not as much though).
A friend of mine also had a subscription from them and he thought he'd put up a webpage of my accomplishes. All over the page you could read the message: "DO NOT DO THIS OR YOU WILL BE SUSPENDED".
He wrote up everything I had done. (Almost everything. I did some more stuff I didn't want to go to jail for so he wasn't allowed to put them up). The webpage was located on the ISPs servers.
After 2 weeks they disconnected him and told him that he would never get an account with them.
And nowhere in the ToS did it say he wasn't allowed to put up his own thoughts or reports about the ISP in question.
He could have fought it but it was easier to get a subscription in someone elses name.
Imagine the look on the face of the technician installing the services when he came back to the same address 2 days later and finds the same guy there and there is nothing he can do about it.
While this would work in most cases.. the fact is that you are just going to take it because you will put up with it?
... and drops the service that the company is providing. Just like my cable bill, which just seems to always go up, and up and up each month. $1 here, .50c here.. soon I'll be paying $200 just to have cable modem and HBO! Eventually the consumer needs to seed a message and live without the service, since it's sucking you dry!
The problem with corporations these days is that they will continue to dish it out until the customer gets so sick of taking it, says.. "I can't fucking take it anymore!"
"Who's is that?"
"Mine."
"Where'd you get it?"
"I found it."
"That dosen't make it yours."
"BUT I FOUND IT! IT'S MINE!"
No surpise. It's XtraMSN after all.
Anyone remember the HotMail spam dramas where they won't sell your email adress, but they'll sell every address you send or receice from? Well, that'll happen here too...
Looks like I won't be recommending Xtra to anyone in a professional context again either.
Goodbye Xtra. Hello TelstraClear.