Friday, May 16, 2008
Microsoft's not the only Web host that wants your content; George W. is a puppet and a paper tiger.
Jul 9, 1999 | Microsoft wants you, too
BY ANDREW LEONARD
(07/02/99)
It's not just Yahoo/Geocities and Microsoft doing this; apparently this is becoming a familiar clause in the terms of service contracts. I did not realize this until I informed a friend of the Geocities scandal and she said, "Read your Xoom TOS." Sure enough, there it was! Tripod also assumes this same claim. There may be others too.
I find this trend deeply disturbing. And I, for one, am looking for a new site for my Web page.
-- Jacqueline Allgood
Indianapolis
I wonder why both Yahoo and Microsoft do not simply rewrite their terms of service in plain English, expressing specifically what they claim they are requesting the rights for. For example, "The user grants the provider the right to copy and move content between servers that are part of the provider's system, including mirror sites."
I doubt that any provider has been successfully sued for moving files from one server to another. I know from personal experience with Geocities that moving or copying files to other servers has been standard procedure and invisible to the member for the most part. Members do not care about that.
What I see in the legal double speak is Yahoo or Microsoft wanting to use their members' work for free in advertisements for their service as they see fit. No way. Free web space boils down to this simple equation: server space provided in return for content, which is necessary to attract advertisers. Both Yahoo and Microsoft missed the boat by assuming their members (or potential members) were as greedy as they are. They also gambled that their members would ignore the fine print. Live and learn.
All any provider has to do in order to use someone's work in an advertisement is to ask. Most users would be flattered to be recognized by their provider and would be happy to allow a provider to use their work to promote the provider's service (and the member's site as well). No matter how many disclaimers either organization places on top of the verbiage, anyone with a bit of common sense is going to see that those words could be interpreted in another way to the member's loss.
-- Anthony Dauer
Slashdot sells out
BY JANELLE BROWN
(06/30/99)
The SlashDot site works because it has the intimacy and irreverence of an insular college bulletin-board system (which indeed is how it started). That its now on the Internet hasn't slowed it down, partly because participants are allowed to remain anonymous. It's a bridge from college to real life for a lot of 20-something technogeeks. When I was that age, there weren't many of us, certainly not enough of us for anything like a community; we were all distracted by working on a variety of very different proprietary systems, and the Internet was just being conceived.
That it's not a moderated site works to its advantage, I think. I mean, you're reading stuff on the Net, so you accept that you'll run across some people who use bad words and/or forgot to take their medication. The forum is obviously not censored, and that's good -- it's real lively, and one can only hope that the site will mature.
-- Robert Munro
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