What is an overreaching “Terms of Service” agreement?

Posted By on July 7, 2011

Am I the only one questioning how some Terms of Service agreements are chipping away at user’s privacy, or just plain legally taking their posted information?

Take for example Google+ project … they aren’t exactly google projectlogoprotecting the users while freely offering this new social networking service. Will it be enough to prevent me from using it? Maybe … how about you?

Take a look at these sections …

“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 on or through, the Services.”

“You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.”

“You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.”

http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS

After being stung by Google’s YouTube service and having my account removed, along with all of my video content … personal as well as the offending clip … I’ve been much more apt to archive my own content, host my own blog site and have been reconsidering using cloud-based “free” services that have objectionable, even to a non-lawyer, Terms of Service agreement.

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  1. lacking in consistency, constancy, or visible order, disconnected; fitful: desultory conversation.
  2. digressing from or unconnected with the main subject; random: a desultory remark.
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