Does Google Own Your Content?

mjasay writes "ZDNet is reporting that Google has a potentially worrisome clause in its User Agreement for Google Apps. Namely, that any content put into the system and 'intended to be available to the members of the public' is free game for Google, reserving the right for Google 'to syndicate Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services and use that Content in connection with any service offered by Google.' Google may not be evil, but giving it these (and other) rights to one's data should be ringing alarm bells in the Google Apps user base."

Comments

Much Ado About Nothing

[gbulmash]

First off, the first key phrase is "By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public..."

That means that they're not applying this to private content, just stuff you intended to be publicly available.

The second key phrase is "you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license..." Note the words "non-exclusive". That means that Google does not own your content. You own it. They just have the right to use it anywhere in the world for free. The remaining legalese covers their butts for the current methods that might be used to display or distribute the content, and any future methods they might use.

I used to manage the photo submissions at IMDb and we used similar phrasing in our TOS. That way when we created IMDbPro, it could use the photos, we could put them not only in photo galleries related directly to the actor or film, but in themed photo galleries, in news summaries related to the actor, etc. If Amazon sold IMDb, or we merged with another film site, or we started another spin-off site, we'd retain the rights to display and use the photos.

Technology changes quickly and you'll find most large companies that display user-submitted content have the same kind of release. It doesn't deprive the content's owner of ownership, but makes sure that a lot of potential headaches that could come up in relation to the use and display of that content over the years don't come up.

Re:Much Ado About Nothing

[peterprior]

Indeed:

From http://www.google.com/google-d-s/intl/en/terms.htm l:

Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services. You or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any Content you submit, post or display on or through Google services and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate.

Re:Much Ado About Nothing

[Robotech_Master]

Right, it's basically just a CYA stating, "If you post something intended to be viewed by the public, then we reserve the non-exclusive right to show that something to the public."

It's just a big tempest in a teapot stirred up by people who having nothing better to do with their time than look for something else "evil" that Google has done, and will naturally put that spin on anything they find. A bit pathetic, really. Google does more than enough bad stuff already that there's no need to manufacture more, and crying wolf too often detracts from the seriousness of the real bad stuff when it is pointed out.

Nothing to see here?

[niceone]

Here's the whole paragraph that that blogger selectively quotes from:

Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services. You or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any Content you submit, post or display on or through Google services and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, modify, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services. Google reserves the right to syndicate Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services and use that Content in connection with any service offered by Google. Google furthermore reserves the right to refuse to accept, post, display or transmit any Content in its sole discretion.

I think it is meant to mean that if you submit content to Google which you intend to be displayed to the public, you um, give them the right to display it to the public however they choose, which is pretty standard stuff. But I'm not sure it actually does say that.

Re:Nothing to see here?

[kimvette]

The scope of their use is pretty limited, too. For example: they can't syndicate it or resell it to other services, but they can use it as a featured video on google video or youtube, or an article or op-ed written by you as a feature on their google news page, or if you wrote a short story, feature it in their online book indices. They're not giving themselves all-you-can-eat buffet access to your content, and unlike some other companies, they acknowledge that work submitted by you is by default copyrighted to you and as such you have exclusive right to control your content outside of the limited scope of uses you are granting them in exchange for using their free services.

Re:Which content?

[eln]

The summary says any content that is intended to be available to the public, which email pretty much never is.

Even so, I try to avoid using Google or any other online service to host anything of a particularly personal (or business critical) nature. I just don't trust some entity I have no control over to host these sorts of things. Sure, if they screw with my data I may have legal recourse, but whatever they did to my data is already done and likely irreversible, so being able to sue them about it is not much of a consolation.

Does Google Own My Content?

[JamesRose]

Does slashdot grossly sensationalise stories?

I still don't see much in the way of problems

[paladinwannabe2]

If you're putting stuff up for the public through Google, about the worst Google can do to you is not show it. If you're worried about what the public (which includes Google and its partners) will do with your content, you shouldn't have put it up in the first place. (Google doesn't actually own your content, just the rights to distribute it however they wish).

Admittedly, Google not showing people your stuff could be a problem- but I think all hosting companies should reserve the right not to show anything they don't like (after refunding your money), because that's a lot easier than listing a bunch of things they won't show (like child porn and copyright infringement) so when they find things later they don't want to show (like ads for illegal services, phishing sites, snuff films, etc.) they can get rid of it without changing the contract.

Re:Do music hosting sites own your music?

[Todd Knarr]

Yes, but think about this: you uploaded your video to YouTube specifically so it could be shown to others. But showing it to others constitutes a performance of that video by YouTube. Now, if they don't include in the terms something saying you give them the right to perform your video, how are they going to show it to others? They've no right to performance, you didn't give them one, so they can't do the very thing you want them to do with your video. Similarly, if you don't give them the right to present it in a different form, they can't include it on their front page or provide people the ability to embed the video (see any number of blog pages where, instead of a link to YouTube, the blogger embeds the actual video in a playable form). And if you don't give YouTube the right to make copies of your video, they can't make the multiple copies onto their cache and delivery servers at various points on the network close to the destination networks (think how Akamai works).

One can argue the exact wording (I prefer terms that make it explicit that the grant is for the sole purpose of providing content within the Web site and related operations and that uses outside the context of the Web site aren't part of the grant), but copyright law means that YouTube and the like have to ask you for certain rights simply to be able to legally do what you want them to do.

Hello from Google

[schillace]

Hi,
I'm the engineering director for Google Docs (and one of the founders of Writely which became the Word Processor part). The comments here are pretty good for the most part - as has been discussed, this is just about re-posting content users have marked as public. Here's what I wrote on the original story, so you don't have to dig it out.

As we state in our terms of service, we don't claim ownership or control over your content in Google Docs & Spreadsheets, whether you're using it as an individual or through Google Apps. Read in its entirety, the sentence from our terms of service excerpted in the blog ensures that, for documents you expressly choose to share with others, we have the proper license to display those documents to the selected users and format documents properly for different displays. To be clear, Google will not use your documents beyond the scope that you and you alone control. Your fantasy football spreadsheets are not going to end up shared with the world unless you want them to be.