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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."
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.
Its enforcable because nothing is making you agree to their clauses. You can just find a different ISP if you don't agree to what they are requiring.
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.
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; }
Interesting. I still take issue with the wording as it is overly general. I think I understand what the agreement is trying to accomplish. Xtra is trying to protect themselves from (frivolous) lawsuits by customers who upload content to an Xtra owned webserver not understanding that said content has now been effectively "published" to the world. Additionally it allows Xtra to make backups of their webservers and now worry about customers trying to force Xtra to purge content from the backups years later. There has been precedents for such foolishness from atleast one (proably many) Usenet kook years ago. (This should come as no surprise to anyone.)
I personally still feel that the wording is still too general. Specifically: any other form of communication. The final limited purposes clause does limit the rights sought by Xtra, but it still leaves the door wide open for abuses. One of the problems with clauses such as these is that while the current owners/management may not have any intention of abusing their customers, future owners may not have the same ethics.
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.