Does Google Own Your Content? 160
mjasay writes "ZDNet is reporting that Google has a potentially worrisome clause in its User Agreement for Google Apps. Namely, that any content put into the system and 'intended to be available to the members of the public' is free game for Google, reserving the right for Google 'to syndicate Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services and use that Content in connection with any service offered by Google.' Google may not be evil, but giving it these (and other) rights to one's data should be ringing alarm bells in the Google Apps user base."
Nothing to see here? (Score:5, Informative)
I think it is meant to mean that if you submit content to Google which you intend to be displayed to the public, you um, give them the right to display it to the public however they choose, which is pretty standard stuff. But I'm not sure it actually does say that.
Re:Which content? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Much Ado About Nothing (Score:5, Informative)
From http://www.google.com/google-d-s/intl/en/terms.ht
Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services. You or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any Content you submit, post or display on or through Google services and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate.
Nothing To See Here...Move along FUD train..... (Score:3, Informative)
Your Rights
Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services. You or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any Content you submit, post or display on or through Google services and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, modify, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services. Google reserves the right to syndicate Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services and use that Content in connection with any service offered by Google. Google furthermore reserves the right to refuse to accept, post, display or transmit any Content in its sole discretion.
Do music hosting sites own your music? (Score:3, Informative)
What that means is that starving musicians could upload their work to a music hosting service, only to find that the site ends up selling CDs of their music, or licensing it for advertising jingles.
MySpace's TOS were this way until someone there organized a big protest. Let me find a link... ah, here we go [boingboing.net] - videos at YouTube too. And I quote:
Now, knowing the sort of folks that post their creations on sites like MySpace and YouTube, how many of them are likely to have even read the terms of service, let alone thought through their consequences?Re:Nothing to see here? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hm (Score:4, Informative)
Oh noes! Your public domain material will be in the public domain!
Apart from the fact that the material in question does not have to be in the public domain, and that Google's wording doesn't imply that it will become so, the rest of your comment is absolutely right.
Lawyers run amok and clueless, illiterate users (Score:4, Informative)
Lawyer with little computer expertise learns that uploaded (and copyrighted) stuff is being reproduced and set out, as the user intended, and thinks (and not entirely without cause) "There are copyright implications to that, because we are, technically, making copies of copyrighted material." He writes a FUD memo to management, who read the subject line with glazed eyes (because it's from a lawyer, and therefore, too complicated for them to understand," and they respond with "What do we need to do?" Lawyer, who has no experience whatsoever at dealing with the general public on the internet, writes a TOS that covers this concerns. Management, who have almost as little experience at dealing with the public (rather than shareholders), rubber stamps is.
These things are intended to cover the Google's (or whoever's) ass for doing what they say they're going to do, and what their users tell them to do: store this stuff and offer it up to the web surfing world under the conditions you said you would.
And a quick perusal of Title 17 shows that copyrights cannot be transferred accidentally anyway. If Google (or whoever) tried to use a clause like that to claim they now owned someone else's work for any purpose other than what was intended by the copyright holder, they'd get their faces blown off by any competent lawyer. Such a clause would be found to be unconscionable, and would not meet the requirements for a copyright transfer even if it weren't.
This is nothing new, and no different than any other "OMFG! THIS TOS IS EVIL" story in the last ten years.
Re:Much Ado About Nothing (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Do music hosting sites own your music? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, but think about this: you uploaded your video to YouTube specifically so it could be shown to others. But showing it to others constitutes a performance of that video by YouTube. Now, if they don't include in the terms something saying you give them the right to perform your video, how are they going to show it to others? They've no right to performance, you didn't give them one, so they can't do the very thing you want them to do with your video. Similarly, if you don't give them the right to present it in a different form, they can't include it on their front page or provide people the ability to embed the video (see any number of blog pages where, instead of a link to YouTube, the blogger embeds the actual video in a playable form). And if you don't give YouTube the right to make copies of your video, they can't make the multiple copies onto their cache and delivery servers at various points on the network close to the destination networks (think how Akamai works).
One can argue the exact wording (I prefer terms that make it explicit that the grant is for the sole purpose of providing content within the Web site and related operations and that uses outside the context of the Web site aren't part of the grant), but copyright law means that YouTube and the like have to ask you for certain rights simply to be able to legally do what you want them to do.
Re:Much Ado About Nothing (Score:3, Informative)
That clause creates an express non-exclusive transfer of copyright. Essentially, this is a clone of the original author's copyright. That is, you the author can do whatever you want with your work product, and the transferee can likewise do whatever he wants to do with your work product (publish, distribute, license to third-party, derive, etc.). Neither of you can prevent the other person from licensing, deriving, etc. of the same work product. They don't even have to cite the original author (there was a nice case were architect B received plans for a shopping mall via this transfer, removed the name of architect A from the plans, published the plans as its own, and prevailed in court).
This is an interesting area of copyright law that I wrote a paper on in law school. It is sort of like what happens when a contractor works for an individual but there is no express transfer of copyright. It is not a work-for-hire, but because of the compensation the contractor cannot withhold rights from the individual. In those cases, it is generally managed by quasi-contract principles. It also falls under state law because Congress managed to exclude it from the Copyright law (sec. 104, IIRC).
Here, however, we have an express creation of a non-exclusive copyright transfer. This also occurs in Hasbro's open gaming license. The problem is that the transfer allows economies of scale to triumph (i.e., the little guy loses because Goliath can out-produce him). I'm sure Google put this in place to avoid future copyright litigation, but it also interferes with you writing the Great American Novel using Google's public space then complaining when Google publishes the novel with its own name.
Hello from Google (Score:5, Informative)
I'm the engineering director for Google Docs (and one of the founders of Writely which became the Word Processor part). The comments here are pretty good for the most part - as has been discussed, this is just about re-posting content users have marked as public. Here's what I wrote on the original story, so you don't have to dig it out.
Re:Much Ado About Nothing (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Much Ado About Nothing (Score:3, Informative)
So there is another example where you spend your money for something, and you are told how you must use what you have purchased.
You can spend your hard earned dollars for a CD. You cannot do whatever you wish with that CD however. You cannot legally distribute it in any way you see fit. You can purchase an XBox 360. You cannot then turn around and put it in a public place and charge people money to play it.
There are two more examples of where you can spend your money and you are being told how you may use what you spent your money on.
Your employer has bought your time from you. He does not then get to tell you to do things that you did not agree to do when you signed on with that company. If you are hired as a PHP coder, your boss does not have the right to tell you to wash his car, do his laundry, and clean out his septic system. He does not have the right to *expect* you to do those things. But would you disagree then, that since he has spent his hard earned money on your time, he should be able to do with it whatever he wants?
There is another example of where money is spent, under a limited use agreement.
It is not just he fact that you are spending money. It is WHAT you are spending money on. Sure, you by a car. You are spending money on that car, and the freedom to do with it what you choose. What about leasing a car? You are still spending money on it. If you lease a car, and spend money on that lease, does that mean you can turn around and sell that car? It does not. If you purchase a car with financing, then sell it before you pay it off, does that mean that since you don't have the car, you don't have to finish paying off what you owe? No it doesn't. So there, are two examples involving money and cars, that dictate what you can and can't do.
It boils down to this. Before you complete an exchange, make sure you know and agree to everything involved with that exchange. Caveat Emptor. Buyer beware.
If you don't like what Google might do with your work, don't submit it. If you want to profit from using Google, by getting your work out to a broader audience, then you have to "pay" them the right to use it if THEY choose to. That's according to the agreement they ask you to read and agree to BEFORE you ever submit a thing. Seems to me that the person who submitted the article to