Now that the news is pretty well broken around the world, it's time for me to jump on the bandwagon. ;) As I'm sure you've heard, AOL's new TOS (Terms of Service) contain some disturbing clauses. My favorite:
Although you or the owner of the Content retain ownership of all right, title and interest in Content that you post to any AIM Product, AOL owns all right, title and interest in any compilation, collective work or other derivative work created by AOL using or incorporating this Content. 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.
It gets better, of course. AOL is also promoting an AOL@Work product that lets you integrate IM and contact management with Outlook. So I'm supposed to send business messages and interact with my business contacts using a service that gives itself permission to take my information and do anything that they please with it? What a joke!
How can anyone still need a reason to stop using AIM? I'm sure most people will go blindly on, not caring and not wanting to change. I'm probably not going to be able to eliminate AIM completely from my computing diet, but you better believe that I'll be thinking twice before each and every time I hit the Send button. No more personal discussions on AIM, that's for sure. If they want to publish my discussion about what I want on my pizza tonight, by all means, be my guest, I'm sure it'll win them 10 new customers. Probably the other 10 loonies in the world who want Tomato, Ham and Pepperoni.
Yeah, I read about that on LiveJournal's Privacy Forum. I recommended BitWise.
This has been all over the internet the last few days, it's crazy the amount of publicity that it is getting, and for good reason. It's too bad there are no statitics about the amount of active AIM users, I wouldn't be surprised if even the least-paranoid people stopped using this program after hearing this news. I myself am not very paranoid, but if I had been an AIM user, I would not be anymore. Why did they put this in their TOS? It just doesn't make sense. Has anyone seen an explanation from AOL for this? I am really curious as to what their intentions are. Do they want to make this into a reality PC show? Enjoy your Tomato, Ham and Pepperoni; I know I enjoyed my swedish meatballs.
looks like there is some explanation here; http://news.com.com/AOL+clarifies+IM+privacy+guarantee/2100-1030_3-5616543.html?tag=nefd.top