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Privacy Advocates Slam Google Drive's Privacy Policies
DJRumpy writes "Privacy advocates voiced strong concerns this week over how data stored on Google Drive may be used during and after customers are actively engaged in using the cloud service. While the TOS for Dropbox and Microsoft both state they will use your data only as far as is necessary to provide the service you have requested, Google goes a bit farther: 'Google's terms of use say: "You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours. When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes that we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content."'
"a close and careful reading reveals that Google's terms are pretty much the same as anyone else's, and slightly better in some cases"
http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2973849/google-drive-terms-privacy-data-skydrive-dropbox-icloud
it's in my head
They don't sell your data to customers, that would be illegal. They look at your data and use it to build a description of your personality and then they sell the fact that they know your personality to advertisers.
Doesn't explain why they need rights to distribute and create derivative works.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Doesn't explain why they need rights to distribute and create derivative works.
Creating a thumbnail or a document preview would constitute a derivative work. Displaying it on your browser would be distribution.
Conveniently left out of the summary and TFA is that this only applies to DATA YOU EXPLICITLY MAKE PUBLIC in your Google Drive.
Which is the same policy as Google Docs had, same as Picasa had, etc.
If you mark a document public then it can be searched for and found. (But in my tests, its rarely searchable - probably my stuff is too boring even for Google's spiders).
Foremost in Google's policy it states:
Information we share
We do not share personal information with companies, organizations and individuals outside of Google unless one of the following circumstances apply:
With your consent
We will share personal information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of Google when we have your consent to do so. We require opt-in consent for the sharing of any sensitive personal information.
So if you mark it private, it means its almost as private as it can be while still being in the cloud. Of course Google has to honor subpoenas, but your next great novel will not appear in someone's search results if mark it private.
If you want better privacy for your commercial cloud storage your best bet is SpiderOak which stores everything encrypted with an encryption key that even SpiderOak doesn't know. They use client-side decryption, and therefore couldn't hand over your stuff even at gunpoint.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
What a fluff piece from the Verge. It doesn't compare the exact wording of the policies. Instead, it justifies Google's policy by saying abuse is "unlikely" (which isn't the point) and explains that rival services need certain delivery permissions to run the service, but it doesn't cite any examples from the policies of those rivals that are equivalent to the content license that Google Drive grants.
The article also claims that "public" refers to the user and their actions regarding their own data. But that is NOT what Google Drive's policy states--it explicitly states that the content is licensed to Google as well as anyone Google works with.
Because you have the option to share your documents publicly. Creating and sharing a really popular document might warrant automatic translation by Google into other languages so that other regions, too, can read your public document. That translation is an example of Google creating and distributing a derivative work.
Dropbox:
We may need your permission to do things you ask us to do with your stuff, for example, hosting your files, or sharing them at your direction. This includes product features visible to you, for example, image thumbnails or document previews. It also includes design choices we make to technically administer our Services, for example, how we redundantly backup data to keep it safe. You give us the permissions we need to do those things solely to provide the Services. This permission also extends to trusted third parties we work with to provide the Services, for example Amazon, which provides our storage space (again, only to provide the Services).
Skydrive:
If you share content in public areas of the service or in shared areas available to others you've chosen, then you agree that anyone you've shared content with may use that content. When you give others access to your content on the service, you grant them free, nonexclusive permission to use, reproduce, distribute, display, transmit, and communicate to the public the content solely in connection with the service and other products and services made available by Microsoft. If you don't want others to have those rights, don't use the service to share your content. You understand that Microsoft may need, and you hereby grant Microsoft the right, to use, modify, adapt, reproduce, distribute, and display content posted on the service solely to the extent necessary to provide the service.
Google Drive
You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours. When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes that we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.
I have bolded the relevant bit that the biased summary failed to include. It is exactly the same as the Microsoft term above.
Doesn't explain why they need rights to distribute and create derivative works.
Content sharing is distribution. Content preview is a derivative work. Skydrive and Dropbox both require exactly the same rights.
OK, well, not all that shocked.
Whoever doesn't realize by now that Google is a marketing agency who makes their money off selling their users' data, deserves to get screwed.
Google makes zero money off selling their users' data. Selling their users data would, in fact, hurt Google's business strategy.
Google makes money off having access to users' data nobody else does. They can tell an advertiser, "we know the people for whom your ad will be most relevant, and no other advertising company has that information." If they were to actually give a list of said users to their client, they'd no longer be able to charge for advertising to those users, because their clients would do it directly.
To be honest, I think anyone that thinks "The Cloud" is secure in any way, shape, or form is an idiot.
Doesn't much matter who's fucking 'cloud' it is, it's just common sense. If you put data on the internet, you're taking a risk in that data being seen by someone else. This is not a new concept.
That's why the privacy hysteria concerning these cloud storage providers cracks me up. Of course there's a risk in doing so. There's a risk in connecting a computer to the internet at all. If that risk isn't a factor in the decision making process of the end user, that's their own fault.
If you want to lock your data in a vault, go rent a fucking vault...but let's not pretend that a person should have any reasonable expectation of a risk-free cloud storage solution. Not gonna happen, not in our lifetimes. We still can't seem to not use passwords like '123456' or 'abcdefg' for fuck's sake. You think there isn't some moron at Google or Dropbox or Skydrive or whoever the fuck that's not doing the exact same shit? Come on, now, people.
When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps). Some Services may offer you ways to access and remove content that has been provided to that Service. Also, in some of our Services, there are terms or settings that narrow the scope of our use of the content submitted in those Services. Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to our Services.
It is incredibly intellectually dishonest to quote only part of a paragraph, without noting the limitation that immediately follows. You can still have problems with the terms (the note on "promoting [and] developing new [services]", especially) Materially, Google's terms seem to be in the same vein as Dropbox's: they need to be able to actually, you know, host your data to be able to actually host your data. But if you want to actually discuss their policies, don't quote them partially out of context. That doesn't help.
I particularly love how people in that article subtly imply that Google is going to sell your data, without actually coming out and saying it (“You have to ask yourself, what’s the business model. If the business model is to make money from a service or money from advertising, that’s one thing. If it’s trying to make money off the sale of data, that’s another thing.” Implying evil behavior is much easier than coming out with an actual accusation: the former requires zero proof.) Google's terms make it pretty clear they can't do that ("You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content"), and even if they change the terms later, they can still be sued for selling the data since it was uploaded under the existing terms. IANAL, of course, but Google is in enough hot water already that it would be practically suicidal (and extremely stupid) to do that.
Oh, and BTW the relevant quote is from their "Terms of Service". Their privacy policies are an entirely different page, so the headline is incorrect: this isn't about their privacy policies, it's about their terms of service. The privacy policies themselves aren't actually discussed in TFA, although they are referenced.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
My take on it -- Google is being more explicit about what they are going to do with data that you mark public.
Example: you post a document. A friend in Germany wants to look at it, and asks Google to display the document (which you wrote in English) in her native German. This requires Google to make at least one intermediate copy, leading to a German translation, which would be considered a derivative work, which is then displayed.
Sounds like they've done an admirable job of covering the bases, to me, rather than the shorthand that others use.
Oh, it goes without saying that when you use/visit a website, if you can't find the product being sold, then you are the product being sold.
..well.. for starters, they're asking for more rights than you usually as a content buyer have.
got an mp3? pretty certain even if you bought it legally that you don't have the right to publicly "perform" it(thanks artist associations and your monopolies!).
they're wording it as a worldwide license for them and their partners to publicly display your data and you're asking why the privacy orgs are barking at them?? wth?? note that they could word the whole service so that it's you who are serving the things to whoever you want by using their service instead of this way of them doing everything.
also I would think this to be a bad choice that opens them to lawsuits, since it's now _google_ doing the re-publishing of the file worldwide if you distribute an illegal mp3 through them.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
They need to explain it better/more fully.
Unfortunately, their explanation seems to be perfectly clear. As you say, it includes no restrictions on use nor any guarantee of any sort security whatsoever. I expect that the objecting privacy advocates are thinking much the same thing as me: it is implausible that an organisation like Google, which has an army of lawyers and just pushed through a fairly controversial change to its privacy policies elsewhere a few weeks ago, claimed these extra powers anything other than deliberately.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
if that's true, then let them ennumerate *exactly* the things they are going to do to your data. wildcard words are good for google but probably pretty bad for the users.
given how creepy this all is becoming, they should start off saying they won't use your data in any way other than X and Y and so on. spell it out and only the things ON the list are allowed. all else, by default would not be. you'd have to state this default disposition first, too.
I won't ever see that from google and so I refuse to use their services as much as I possibly can. (I can't fully not use their services since, when I try to block google domains, many of my other websites that have nothing to do with google stop working. order parts from mouser or digikey and disable google in adblock or noscript? you can't! the vendor goes out to googleapis for this and that. I can't stop that, sadly.)
if you understand what google is about and continue to feed it your data, hey, its your life and if you want to throw your privacy away for cheap isp or network use, that's your decision. I choose to avoid google as much as possible. I see what they are and I choose not to participate with such companies.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
And legalese is legalese because lawyers are assholes and will nail you for any omission, inconsistency or inaccuracy.
Or erroneousness, mistakenness, fallaciousness, faultiness, inexactness, mistake, fallacy, slip, slip-up, oversight, fault, blunder, gaffe; erratum, solecism; informal howler, typo, blooper, goof,exception; deletion, cut, excision, elimination, erasure; gap, blank, or absence.
You didn't even really get started.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The real problem is not that we have a fundamental concern about creating derivative works or in distribution, but in the intended purpose of such actions. Legal language is typically devoid of intent, since intent is a difficult thing to quantify effectively. As a result, legal documents focus on actions, regardless of whether they are good or bad. A derivative work could be, as stated above, creating a thumbnail of a picture (harmless and necessary for many functions, including showing you thumbnails in PicasaWeb, for example). It could also be something else, like taking your codebase in Google Code and just freely incorporating it into a product of their own (not harmless, and intellectual property theft). What I see is that as far as I can tell, Google has yet to commit any gross abuse of such things, nor have they seemed inclined to do so.
Google's next challenge is to find a way to delineate between the types of intent they have and the ones they do not have, in a way which is legally binding and thus will hold credibility with groups like EPIC. I do think EPIC is going a little overboard on their language. For example, Rotenberg says "After the unilateral changes on March 1, I don’t understand why users would trust Google to stand by its terms of service," which seems a bit odd to me. He's using the phrase "unilateral changes" as if there was any other way to change terms of service, or like it is a bad thing. What is he implying...that Google should have crowdsourced the ToS that protects their business, and given up control over what the ToS would end up as? That doesn't seem very realistic, and I'd think someone like Rotenberg would already understand how infeasible that is.
So one part of this is the fact that Google could abuse their users while remaining within the Terms of Service because legal verbiage is bad at distinguishing good intent from bad, and another part is that EPIC is fearmongering a bit. I don't see the real problem, myself, especially since it's possible for their Privacy Policy (which is also in effect) to constrain the actions in the ToS, reducing the amount they could do that's actually "bad".
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
You must be in Europe.....
In the US, it is perfectly legal to sell all your data to customers, in fact, there are MANY companies that do just thing....Acxiom is one such example, they have information on likely 98% of the US, and decades ago, they were just then starting to branch out to other countries, I'm pretty sure they have succeeded by now on that front too.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Simply encrypt everything you keep on Google Drive...I'll bet a company that came out with a cheap, easy to use tool to automate encrypting all data to/from these cloud storage setups, could make some money off said tool....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........