Google Claims User Content In Multiple Products

An anonymous reader writes "Google last week removed some language in its Chrome browser's terms of service that gave the company a license to any material displayed in the browser, but that language remains in several other Google products, including its Picasa photo service and its Blogger service."

Comments

Re:Not a story

[Anonymous Coward]

Google's official explanation to why it was in Chrome was "Ah, it was left there as remains from our other services. Sorry, we'll remove it from that one.

And a week later, Slashdot realizes that it actually is in Google's other services.

Re:Not a story

[Bogtha]

How is this a story? The language is fairly common among services that allow user materials to be uploaded.

It's not a story. It's stupid fearmongering perpetuated by blazing fuckwits who like to hop on the hate bandwagon.

These kinds of terms are necessary for services where copyrighted material is hosted. Otherwise, they don't have permission to serve your content to other users, which is the whole point of the service.

From Slashdot's terms of use :

In each such case, the submitting user grants SourceForge the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, and display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed, all subject to the terms of any applicable license.

Everybody who thinks this is some kind of evil scheme by Google to rob content should now leave Slashdot, for they are doing exactly the same thing.

Re:Not a story

[Otto]

I wish I could mod you above 5 points.

Those terms are REQUIRED for Google to be able to display your content.

Let's examine them carefully, eh?
"By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display."

So, what exactly are we giving Google here?

Basically, it's a license to display the content. Hey, they sorta need that if I'm uploading photos for the purpose of them actually displaying it on the internet.

They have a "perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license". Meaning that they can display those pictures without paying me for them, worldwide, forever. Okay, the irrevocable part sucks, because if I take the content offline, I'd like it to be actually taken offline, but that's a minor legal thing that's probably there because they can't guarantee that what with their caching schemes and such.

They can "reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute". Reproduction is required in order to publish/perform/display/distribute the photos. Adapt, modify, translate applies to resizing, cropping, that sort of thing.

This is a non-story, people. They are not taking the copyright away, they are asking for the legal ability to do *what you want them to actually do*. Which is basically to host your content.

Re:Not a story

[42forty-two42]

The rights do stay with the uploader. But Google needs a license from the uploader to display the material at all - and that's the purpose of the relevant segment of the TOS. As for promotional images, it'd make sense that they can take screenshots and etc of their service, no? If you want a service that promises never to commercialize your content ever, you should be paying for it. And the promotional rights terminate as well "within a commercially reasonable period after such Content is removed"