OT: AOL Claims Property on AIM Messages

[Fyron]

acaben writes "AOL has posted new terms of service for AIM, that include the right for AOL to use anything and everything you send through AIM in any way they see fit, without informing you. A sample passage: '...by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium. You waive any right to privacy.'"

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/05/03/11/2359226.shtml?tid=120&tid=158&tid=17

Next stop: your soul!

[RudyHuxtable]

Ummm, so now my IMs are going to be READ and used for advertising or worse?

I'd better stop trying to develop top secret weapons over AIM.

The world is gradually Shadowrun-izing. All we need now are dwarves and elves.

And more cowbell.

[Fyron]

Vive le Jabber! (http://www.jabber.org)

[RudyHuxtable]

Isn't there one that lets you use a whole bunch at once, and you can use it to communicate with each server? What's the called?

[Fyron]

Tons.

http://www.trillian.cc/
http://gaim.sourceforge.net/
http://www.miranda-im.org/

To name a few. All of these support Jabber, I believe... Not postive about Miranda, but it likely does.

[Thermodyne]

It would be quite easy to run them past a program that picked out key word and than target advertising with the results. Same software could also pick out key word and phrases that would be of interest to big brother. All that is needed is computing power, which I think they have an excess of. And this will basically remove any right to privacy that previously existed. I really fail to see why people put up with them at all. But I guess all those free CD’s really do suck in a lot of uninformed people.

[Raging Deadstar]

RudyHuxtable said:
The world is gradually Shadowrun-izing. All we need now are dwarves and elves.



Clutches Eyes!!!!

The Horror, The Horror of that game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif I mean, Cyberpunk was fun even though you had to enjoy making characters, mainly because your current one would die pretty quickly. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Lol, Shadowrun though.... shudders Never believe anyone when they say "It's like Cyberpunk, just with dwarves and elves and such!"

Ah well, I rarely send stuff over AIM thankfully.

[Azselendor]

Hey, does anyone know fi this extends to ICQ too?

[Baron Munchausen]

If they are serious about this then they've just killed AIM dead as a doornail. There is plenty of competition and every one will switch in a heartbeat when they realize that AOHell is claiming to own their messages.

Are you sure this is not being misinterpreted?

[Baron Munchausen]

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/11/2359226&tid=120&tid=158&tid=17

Oops, looking at the Slashdot article, I guess it's real.

Baron Munchausen's corporate corollary to Murphy's Law:

Whatever is too stupid to be done, will be done by some corporation.

Never underestimate the stupidity of corporations.

[Suicide Junkie]

You can read it right from AOL's site too.
http://www.aim.com/tos/tos.adp

In addition, by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium. You waive any right to privacy. You waive any right to inspect or approve uses of the Content or to be compensated for any such uses.

[Azselendor]

I wonder, does this mean if terrorist use AIM, then AOL is somehow supporting and claiming ownership over terrorist plans? lol

[boran_blok]

If so could we sue AOL for not preventing aforemented plans of being executed ?

Anyways, silly stuff imho, Very very very dangerous, in essence they can have a 24/7 monitor on your chat behaviour.

[Phoenix-D]

Imperator Fyron said:
Tons.

http://www.trillian.cc/
http://gaim.sourceforge.net/
http://www.miranda-im.org/

To name a few. All of these support Jabber, I believe... Not postive about Miranda, but it likely does.



None of which will do you any good because the agreement covers -accounts-, not the program.

If you use these, you're still subject to the AOL TOS, and they -still- claim ownership of everything you send to an AIM user.

[Captain Kwok]

I think he was recommending the Jabber chat service in this case, over AIM, MSN, etc. - not saying using the listed chat clients with existing AIM accounts etc.

[Fyron]

Phoenix-D said:
If you use these, you're still subject to the AOL TOS, and they -still- claim ownership of everything you send to an AIM user.

Right, but not over Jabber, which is what I was mentioning them for.

[Sivran]

This is why we have this thing called encryption http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif