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AOL Changing IM Terms of Service 229

Posted by Zonk from the at-least-they're-trying dept.
gpmac writes "AOL has responded to the recent slashdot attention. America Online Inc. plans to make three small but significant modifications to the terms of service for its AIM instant messaging product to head off a firestorm of privacy-related criticisms. The tweaks to the terms of service will be made in the section titled "Content You Post" and will explicitly exclude user-to-user chat sessions from the privacy rights an AIM user gives up to AOL."
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AOL Changing IM Terms of Service More

AOL Changing IM Terms of Service

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  • Nice (Score:5, Funny)

    by wandernotlost ( 444769 ) <{moc.cigamliart} {ta} {todhsals}> on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @02:56PM (#11945463)
    They must have read my complaints in my away message.

  • They came, they saw.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @02:56PM (#11945470)
    and they fixed. Kudos to AOL for this one. Now, if only they could do more about the spammers on their network...

  • Too little, too late (Score:5, Funny)

    by Capt'n Hector ( 650760 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @02:57PM (#11945474)
    I've already stopped flirting with girls on IM. Although, I am working on a secret code. People that intercept my instant messages won't be able to understand a word I'm saying. I'll replace "you" with "u", "that's funny" with "lol", "skate" witk "sk8." Things like that. All in the name of privacy.

  • From TFA... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by leonmergen ( 807379 ) * <lmergenNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @02:57PM (#11945476) Homepage

    "We're not making any policy changes. We're making some linguistic changes to clarify certain things and explain it a little better to our users," AOL spokesperson Andrew Weinstein told eWEEK.com.

    Hmmm, is it just me or does this look like making things look better ? From my experience, lawyers usually pay a lot of attention on the things they write, and especially these kind of mistakes are the ones that plainly don't happen in published legal documents...

    ... unless they wanted to trick you into it, ofcourse.

    • Re:From TFA... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Elwood P Dowd ( 16933 ) <judgmentalist@gmail.com> on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:04PM (#11945547) Journal
      From my experience, lawyers usually pay a lot of attention on the things they write, and especially these kind of mistakes are the ones that plainly don't happen in published legal documents... ... unless they wanted to trick you into it, ofcourse.
      No, you are full of crap. If a lawyer says, "Sign this document, and we'll execute contract A," and then has you sign a document actually only authorizing contract B, the signed document would be thrown out in court. If the lawyer knew about it, he might be liable, and he might be guilty of fraud.

      Once AOL publically said, "No, we have not and will not read AIM chats," it better have been the truth, otherwise they could get turned inside out in court. No matter what their privacy policy said.

      • Re:From TFA... (Score:2)

        by leonmergen ( 807379 ) * <lmergenNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:20PM (#11945697) Homepage

        No, you are full of crap. If a lawyer says, "Sign this document, and we'll execute contract A," and then has you sign a document actually only authorizing contract B, the signed document would be thrown out in court. If the lawyer knew about it, he might be liable, and he might be guilty of fraud.

        But in this case, isn't it rather one contract you agreed to, which had a certain sentence which could be interpreted as 'all your messages are belong to us', which they now changed ?

        As in, if the lawyer knew about this, how is he guilty when people could have read the privacy policy, and agreed to it ( ok, true, very few people actually *do* read it ) ?

        • Re:From TFA... (Score:2)

          by Elwood P Dowd ( 16933 ) <judgmentalist@gmail.com> on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:41PM (#11945913) Journal
          But in this case, isn't it rather one contract you agreed to, which had a certain sentence which could be interpreted as 'all your messages are belong to us', which they now changed?
          Yes, exactly, except that they also publicly claimed that their privacy policy could not be interpreted as "all your messages are belong to us". If someone went after AOL for repurposing their AIM conversation, and AOL, in court, said, "But look at our privacy policy!", plaintiff would only have to say, "But look at your press release, you lying sonofabitch." Judges brook no such bullshit.

          • Re:From TFA... (Score:2)

            by HiThere ( 15173 ) * <charleshixsn@@@earthlink...net> on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:54PM (#11946057)
            In a way you are right. With enough time and money in such a case you can prevail. But often such clauses could get a case thrown out before even being accepted as "obviously frivolous". (I'm not quite sure what I mean here...I might mean it would be hard to find a lawyer willing to take the case, partially because when he first looked at it it would be an obvious loser, and partially because it would be a threat to his license).

            But even where you are right, this makes any case much more expensive to prosecute. Yes, you can win eventually, but eventually can take a long time. Just look at SCOX...that case was a clear loser before it was even in court, SCOX has come up with NO evidence, and IBM is still being made to pay millions in legal fees (including discovery costs). And SCOX has no case at all. NONE! They aren't even consistent about what they're claiming IBM did!

    • Re:From TFA... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 91degrees ( 207121 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:13PM (#11945633) Journal
      It seems that legal and marketing simply didn't talk to each other.

      The legal department wanted to be sure they had the right to do everything they might do, even if they're not remotely likely to do so. Their only concern is that they don't get sued.

      Unfortunately they didn't consider what the response public would be is someone actually read the legalese. Considering that isn;t their job. The public image of AOL is a marketting matter. Not a legal matter.

      As is often the case in large companies, the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing.

    • Re:From TFA... (Score:2)

      by EvanED ( 569694 ) <{evaned} {at} {gmail.com}> on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:21PM (#11945718)
      From what some people posted in the original /. discussion, it appears that the terms never applied to IM communication.

      I think the problem is not that it wasn't worded clearly before from a legal standpoint, but that people weren't paying enough attention to the part that said that the new terms only applay to this, this, and that other service, which didn't include AIM proper.

    • Re:From TFA... (Score:2)

      by Trillan ( 597339 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @05:32PM (#11947057) Homepage Journal

      Before spreading any more FUD, I suggest you actually read the part of the TOS in question. It is not perfectly clear, but it is clear enough that this entire series of events should never have occured.

      This incident has proven to me that not only is the cliche about nature building better idiots is true, but in today's web space there are a seemingly infinite number of bloggers who will run a panic story without checking the facts first.

  • Makes you wonder... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tabkey12 ( 851759 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @02:57PM (#11945481) Homepage
    how the change ever was added in the first place? Overzealous legal department?

  • I don't know about you all ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SengirV ( 203400 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @02:57PM (#11945482)
    ... But I don't have too many NON user-to-user conversations using IM. So am I free to say and do anything(talking to another on IM that is) without it ever coming back to haunt me?

  • bye bye (Score:4, Funny)

    by donnyspi ( 701349 ) <`junk5' `at' `donnyspi.com'> on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @02:58PM (#11945483) Homepage
    {Sound effect: chi-tunk}
    donnyspi signed off at 13:56:26 PM

  • AOL's new motto (Score:5, Funny)

    by Zemplar ( 764598 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @02:58PM (#11945491) Journal
    "We AIM to Please!"

    From information gathered by reading your private messages, we've decided to retract former policies.

  • For once (Score:2, Insightful)

    by a_greer2005 ( 863926 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @02:59PM (#11945493)
    The collective voices of thousands of "Little People"(tm) made a differance on a huge company. This is a trend that I would love to see continue accross the board, a large company careing about their customers.
    Props to AOL, looks like I can once again log in and chat without fear of them retaining rights to it.

  • From TFA... (Score:5, Informative)

    by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) * on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @02:59PM (#11945497)
    Not to quote the lion's share of the article here, but there are some things that need to be seen...

    The tweaks to the terms of service will be made in the section titled "Content You Post" and will explicitly exclude user-to-user chat sessions from the privacy rights an AIM user gives up to AOL.

    "We're not making any policy changes. We're making some linguistic changes to clarify certain things and explain it a little better to our users," AOL spokesperson Andrew Weinstein told eWEEK.com.

    The modifications will use similar language from the AIM privacy policy to "make it clear that AOL does not read private user-to-user communications," Weinstein said.

    [...]

    More importantly, Weinstein said a blunt and inelegant line that reads "You waive any right to privacy" will be deleted altogether.

    "That's a phrase that should not have been in that section in the first place. It clearly caused confusion, with good reason," Weinstein conceded.

    [...]

    Justin Uberti, chief architect for AIM, also joined the discussion, admitting the controversial section of the terms of service was "vague" and needed to be reworded.

    Uberti explained on his Weblog that the amount of IM traffic on the AIM network "is on the order of hundreds of gigabytes a day."

    "It would be very costly, and we have no desire to record all IM traffic. We don't do it," Uberti wrote.

    For AIM users who remain distrustful, Uberti pointed out that the application offers Direct IM (aka Send IM Image) and Secure IM in all recent versions.

    "In other words, you can send your IMs in such a way that they never go through our servers, and/or are encrypted with industry-standard SSL and S/MIME technology. I know this since I designed these features. There are no backdoors; I would not have permitted any," Uberti said.

    • And directly from... (Score:5, Informative)

      by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) * on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:04PM (#11945543)
      ...Juberti's blog [aol.com] (the chief architect for the AIM service):

      AIM Privacy and Slashdot

      OK, I am getting tired of hearing about how "The new AIM TOS allows AOL to have all rights to anything you say on IM, AOL reads/stores all your IMs, etc."

      I take this kind of personally, because that is not something I would want to be associated with.

      First off, that blurb in the TOS only refers to AIM forum posts, not IMs. I agree that it is vague and should be reworded to be clear.

      Second, the amount of IM traffic is on the order of hundreds of gigabytes a day. It would be very costly, and we have no desire to record all IM traffic. We don't do it.

      Thirdly, if you still don't trust us, we have Direct IM (aka Send IM Image) and Secure IM in all recent versions of the AIM software. In other words, you can send your IMs in such a way that they never go through our servers, and/or are encrypted with industry-standard SSL and S/MIME technology. I know this since I designed these features. There are no backdoors; I would not have permitted any.

      I am saying this as a concerned invidual, and not as a corporate mouthpiece.

    • Re:From TFA... (Score:2)

      by jc42 ( 318812 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:47PM (#11945970) Homepage Journal
      The tweaks to the terms of service will be made in the section titled "Content You Post" and will explicitly exclude user-to-user chat sessions from the privacy rights an AIM user gives up to AOL.

      Amidst all this talk of privacy, people seem to be missing the significant copyright issue in this story. AOL is claiming that they own all the rights, i.e., they own the copyright, for anything "posted" to a discussion.

      So if you copy a brief exchange in an AOL discussion, and send the exchange to someone else (or post it elsewhere), you have violated AOL's claimed copyright for that text.

      Ordinarily, public discussions are, well, public. If you're using AOL, this may not be true. You may have no right to keep a copy of a discussion or to share it with anyone else. As soon as you post a message, it becomes AOL's property, and you have no right to use it at all.

      This isn't the first time that this sort of thing has happened. Remember a year or two back, when MSN customers discovered that MSN was extracting things from customer email (mostly images) and using them in advertising? MSN claimed that they could do this legally, because their TOS stated clearly that any data stored on an msn.com machine was MSN's property.

      There was a big fuss, and MSN seems to have backed off. But this sort of claim on customers' messages has yet to be tested in court, and many corporations are including such clauses in their contracts. This may be legal in the US and other countries. If so, you may not own the copyright to your own messages. Sending a message may constitute assigning the copyright to the message service (AOL in this case).

      OTOH, if you think the file-sharing issue is fun, wait until AOL starts firing off C&D letters to people who make copies of their own IM discussions ...

  • Don't you people watch Law and Order? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:01PM (#11945515)
    They have already proved in court, many many times, that you have no expectation of privacy in such things as email and instant messaging. I'm not sure why were even discussing this.

    • because (Score:4, Insightful)

      by vena ( 318873 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:08PM (#11945580)
      common courtesy isn't always defined by law.

    • Re:Don't you people watch Law and Order? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MrLint ( 519792 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:16PM (#11945663) Journal
      No expectation of privacy isnt the same as giving AOL to essentially republish everyone in any for forever.

    • Re:Don't you people watch Law and Order? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dinivin ( 444905 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:19PM (#11945686)
      It's a freakin' TV show. A good TV show, but just a TV show. It is not reality, and should not be the basis for any real legal opinion.

      Dinivin

    • Re:Don't you people watch Law and Order? (Score:2)

      by Homology ( 639438 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:25PM (#11945763)
      They have already proved in court, many many times, that you have no expectation of privacy in such things as email and instant messaging. I'm not sure why were even discussing this.

      "Law and Order"? If I thought you where an US citizen (sorry, but there are many more Americans than US citizens) I would have to believe that you are serious. But since you clearly are European (you know, from the "old Europe" where governments actually listen to the population), I'll have to mod you as +1 Funny.

      • Re:Don't you people watch Law and Order? (Score:2)

        by stevejsmith ( 614145 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @04:03PM (#11946152) Homepage
        The American vs. US citizen crusade is tired and old. Plenty of languages have anachronisms, especially for nationalities. Most Slavic languages' word for "German" is directly related to the word "mute," the English name "Holland," in Dutch, actually refers to a place in the Netherlands, the adjective "Dutch" is a misinterpretation... Languages evolve sometimes to mean things other than their literal and obvious meanings. In this case, the term "American" has been adopted to mean "one of the United States of America." And honestly, with good reason! The USA was the first country in America, therefore if anyone can claim that title, it should be them. Your argument is affected and arbitrary. Go fight for a real cause.

        • Re:Don't you people watch Law and Order? (Score:2)

          by Homology ( 639438 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @04:14PM (#11946261)
          In this case, the term "American" has been adopted to mean "one of the United States of America." And honestly, with good reason! The USA was the first country in America, therefore if anyone can claim that title, it should be them. Your argument is affected and arbitrary. Go fight for a real cause.

          A childhood friend of mine studied at an US (Texas) university in the late eigthies. He summarized it like this "The US has some very great universities, but their high school system is awful." You're an example that some things has not improved for nearly two decades.

        • Funny USians (Score:2, Troll)

          by Pac ( 9516 ) <paulo...candido@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @04:18PM (#11946285)
          the term "American" has been adopted to mean "one of the United States of America."

          You can adopt whatever you want. It does not automatically follow that people from other countries in the (North/Central/South) American continent have to follow, agree or refrain from finding you ridiculous...

          • Re:Funny USians (Score:2)

            by PitaBred ( 632671 ) <slashdot&pitabred,dyndns,org> on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @04:47PM (#11946606) Homepage
            The difference is that our country name has the word "America" in it, hence, the American nomination. People from South America call themselves Brazilians or Columbians, not South Americans. Oh, wait... I forgot. Anything that is against the USA is insightful. Get a life, get a clue.

            • Angry USians? (Score:2)

              by Pac ( 9516 ) <paulo...candido@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @04:57PM (#11946696)
              Oh, come on - you shouldn't call yourselves "North Americans" either - there are the Canadians and the Mexicans sharing the northern subcontinent with you. And, obviously, the people who live in South America does not call themselves by the continent name - it would be unpolite and unseemly. But then again, being "American" means you don't have to care about what other people think, right?

            • Re:Funny USians (Score:2)

              by jc42 ( 318812 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @05:23PM (#11946973) Homepage Journal
              Correct. And the explanation goes even deeper than that.

              Thus, to the south of the USA is a country that officially calls itself "Estados Unidos Mexicanos", or the United Mexican States. But everyone calls it "Mexico".

              Similarly, the largest country in South America is officially called "Republica Federativa do Brasil", but we usually just say "Brasil" (or "Brazil").

              In Europe, there's a big country whose official name is "Bundesrepublik Deutschland", usually translated as "Federal Republic of Germany"; it is almost always called "Deutschland" or "Germany".

              Shortening "United States of America" to just "America" fits exactly the pattern used with other countries. As with Deutschland/Germany, Brasil and Mexico, "America" is unambiguous, because there's no other country with that word in its name. Everyone understands when you drop the bureaucratic beginning of the official name and just use the unique portion.

              What's bizarre is that people keep objecting to this use of "America", while not objecting to the similar shortening of other countries' names.

  • So does AOL listen? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jcm ( 4767 ) * on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:01PM (#11945521) Homepage
    Hopefully folks will appreciate the amount of sway that a good argument does have at AOL. If it wasn't for public discussion the TOS probably would not have been changed. But the public discussion happened and there will now be a more specific TOS statements. I wish folks would always give AOL a chance instead of immediately bashing. Was this enough to buy some good will from folks for the future?

  • what they forgot to mention (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Prince Vegeta SSJ4 ( 718736 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:06PM (#11945558)
    and will explicitly exclude user-to-user chat sessions from the privacy rights an AIM user gives up to AOL

    Was that, 75% of their chat sessions are user--to--server--to--user, which since they did not specifically specify are now exempt from privacy expectations.

    OMG, LOL CUL8R d00d

    • Re:what they forgot to mention (Score:2)

      by Laivincolmo ( 778355 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:14PM (#11945647)
      I believe they meant that in public chatrooms or in forums, content that you say or post is public.

      As explained in detail in the AIM Privacy Policy, AOL does not read your private online communications when you use any of the communication tools on AIM Products. If, however, you use these tools to post Content or other information to public areas on AIM Products (for example, in chat rooms or online message boards), other online users will have access to this information and Content.

      They also mention..

      AOL owns all right, title and interest in any compilation, collective work or other derivative work created by AOL using or incorporating Content posted to public areas of AIM Products.

  • How it's being spun ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jc42 ( 318812 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:11PM (#11945603) Homepage Journal
    I'd already read a number of the stories about this at news.google.com, and very few of them mention any change to the TOS. Rather, they spin it as a customer "misunderstanding" of AOL's privacy rules. They've said that AOL is merely "clarifying" the rules, with no mention of any changes.

    OTOH, there is now one story listed, from p2pnet.net, that uses the word "modify". So maybe the real story will be reported by a few tech news sources, while the general media will report it as a misunderstanding that is being clarified.

    • Re:How it's being spun ... (Score:2)

      by SlayerofGods ( 682938 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @04:01PM (#11946135)
      It was a misunderstanding. AIM never wanted to spy on you. They just wanted legal protection for other aim products like (as the new TOS points out) rate a buddy.
      Basically what they always ment to say is that if you put your picture on rate a buddy then we have the right to use that picture how ever we want.
      The problem was that it wasn't clearly worded that only public postings could be used in this way by AOL.
      So they aren't trying to spin this, what they're saying is the truth.

      • Re:How it's being spun ... (Score:2)

        by jc42 ( 318812 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @04:53PM (#11946662) Homepage Journal
        But the AOL TOS actually states that 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".

        In other words, AOL claims the copyright to anything you send using "an AIM Product". You have no right to use even your own words, and AOL can do with your words as they like. You can't save or send a friend a copy of an IM discussion that you were a part of, because this violates AOL's rights as stated above. But AOL can take your words, extract as they like, and do as they wish with your words, including using them for commercial purposes.

        This doesn't sound at all like they're after legal protection for AIM products. It sounds like they are claiming that they own anything that anyone sends using an AIM product.

        If this isn't the meaning of the above text, what does it mean?

        • Re:How it's being spun ... (Score:2)

          by SlayerofGods ( 682938 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @05:35PM (#11947098)
          First off you don't lose the rights to what ever you post you only give AOL the rights to use it as well.
          But anyway. What they originally ment by 'posting Content on an AIM Product' was public content.
          Think about it. If you post a message on a message board and don't give the company the rights to display your message.... how are they suppose to legally show it?
          The misunderstand was that the original TOS didn't specifically say that only public postings would be used, but that is what they ment. So there fore it was a misunderstanding.

    • Re:How it's being spun ... (Score:2)

      by m50d ( 797211 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @05:32PM (#11947053) Homepage Journal
      That's not how it's being spun, that's how it is. It was always the case that these were only the rules for forum posts, or at least it looked like that.

  • At least one thing your parents told you was true (Score:5, Funny)

    by clickster ( 669168 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:11PM (#11945615)
    See Timmy, if they work really really hard, a few hundred thousand people really can make a difference.

  • Nice to see (Score:2)

    by SteelV ( 839704 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:11PM (#11945617)
    It's really nice to see this happening. I wouldn't expect a big company to fold under public pressure over something like this. This is what the internet is meant for. Good job, Slashdot!

    • Re:Nice to see (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:17PM (#11945668)
      Gmail is indexing private email conversation. And no
      amount of public pressure has caused them to change.

      Big bad boy AOL changes. but "do-no-evil" Google
      is allowed to get away with it.

  • It is my sincere hope... (Score:4, Funny)

    by HotNeedleOfInquiry ( 598897 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:16PM (#11945653)
    That the corporate attorney that wrote the first 'draft' is on the street looking for another job right now.

  • because of SLASHDOT?!?!? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xxavierg ( 538582 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:23PM (#11945736)
    "AOL has responded to the recent slashdot attention."

    where in the article did it say that slashdot was the motivating force? i read that it was just received a "firestorm of privacy-related criticism". please, this might be a popular site, but don't take credit where none is deserved. especially when the article never mentioned any group in particular. i am sure slashdot was one of MANY groups, organization, sites, etc. that complained. but in no did it change it's policy just because of slashdot...

  • Thank you...but... (Score:2)

    by SamMichaels ( 213605 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:24PM (#11945747)
    AOL, thanks for hearing us out. We appreciate it.

    Now what about Google Desktop, Deadaim, et al that record your conversation? People saying that they're home-free from being haunted by their words later on are sadly mistaken. Just because AOL isn't listening doesn't mean someone else isn't.

  • The power of /. (Score:4, Funny)

    by PhatboySlim ( 862704 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:25PM (#11945756)
    Now we just need to get the RIAA to read a few articles.

  • very costly (Score:5, Insightful)

    by trb ( 8509 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:26PM (#11945770)
    Uberti explained on his Weblog that the amount of IM traffic on the AIM network "is on the order of hundreds of gigabytes a day."

    "It would be very costly, and we have no desire to record all IM traffic. We don't do it," Uberti wrote.

    Ooh, hundreds of gigabytes a day, it would be very costly to record all that traffic. Gee, Dr. Evil, what does a 100 Gigabyte storage device cost? One Million Dollars?

    • Re:very costly (Score:2, Informative)

      by TorrentNinja ( 846388 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:42PM (#11945920) Homepage
      Not even 1 million. Think about all that text. I'm sure you could compress the hell out of all that data and you would be able to store it. Why would they store raw data when they could compress it down? I bet they are able to Tap connections and peer into what people are talking about if they have the capability to monitor the raw traffic being sent. If it's an option they have then I'm sure some sysadmin or tech guys is going to be using it.

    • Re:very costly (Score:2, Funny)

      by rbochan ( 827946 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:58PM (#11946107) Homepage
      Maybe THAT'S what's on all those damn aol cds...

    • Re:very costly (Score:2)

      by TomorrowPlusX ( 571956 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @04:28PM (#11946384)
      Well sure, if all you're talking about is *storage*. But employing people to read all that for incriminating discussion would be prohibitive.

      Sure, a computer could pattern match to find potentially incriminating discussion, but frankly, AI ain't there. You'll need humans, and humans require pay.

      Not to mention the fact that anybody forced/paid to read even a tenth of a percent of that crap would go apeshit in just one day of reading all that inanity.

      Now, back to reading slashdot...

      • *giggle* (Score:2)

        by Schwartzboy ( 653985 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @05:35PM (#11947101)
        Not to mention the fact that anybody forced/paid to read even a tenth of a percent of that crap would go apeshit in just one day of reading all that inanity.

        Now, back to reading slashdot...

        Please tell me that I'm not the only person who did a double-take reading that, and that the effect was intentional? On a completely unrelated topic, what's the best way to clean Mt. Dew off of a monitor?

  • Pretty cool (Score:2)

    by acaben ( 80896 ) * <bstanfield.gmail@com> on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:33PM (#11945836)
    I'm feeling pretty pleased with the effects I've seen from a post on my previously barely-read blog [benstanfield.com].

    My latest post on the AIM matter celebrates another important victory by the blogosphere. In just two days, I helped to direct enough attention to the bad sections of AIM's privacy policy that they're now changing it. While I started the fracas, it wasn't me, but the cacophony of voices that picked up on the story and helped to get the attention of AOL.

    I'll continue to try to be vigilant of what I'm agreeing to online, and hope others will, too. Privacy and ownership are important concepts, and this proves we can make sure that corporations respect us.
    • But the change was made in 2004. A year ago. The whole "just because they SAY they won't doesn't mean that they won't ever do it!" line is kind of old as well.

      Welcome to the Internet. Slashdot can change its privacy policy at anytime. There are dozens of other companies out there that have almost identical AUP texts in place. Yahoo's AUP comes to mind. Nothing is stopping any internet company from doing whatever they want with the data.
      Fact is, AOL has no business need to monitor AIM conversations. Why would they? There's no profit to be made, so why would they implement infrastructure to read chat conversations? AOL keeps a "hands off" approach to chat rooms and chat conversations because if they DID monitor them, it'd be a huge liability for them. HUGE legal issues.

      This didn't prove squat about corporations respecting us. Hate to tell you, but it was a tiny pebble in a huge pond.

      (disclaimer: Back in 2000, I used to work for Netscape/AOL in AOL Network Services. This issue has been around for a LONG time.. way before the Blogosphere. It was stated way back then that chat conversations weren't going to be monitored then, and there were no plans to. 5 years later, AOL is still saying the same thing.)

      Hate to tell you, but this really was a non-issue. Want to get bent out of shape by an AUP? Look at the crap Gratis shoves on people with these "freeipod.com" scams. Check out *that* AUP/TOS of you want something to fear.

  • Nice start, but could have been done better (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tji ( 74570 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:47PM (#11945966)
    > explicitly exclude user-to-user chat sessions from the privacy rights an AIM user gives up to AOL.

    That's an improvement. But, wouldn't it be better (from a user rights and privacy perspective) to explicitly state the areas they DO take ownership of your data in, rather than only excluding this one area? The default case should be that they don't own your data. With excluding only AIM, they still leave the default case for all other services to be that AOL owns your data.

    It's sort of like opt-in vs. opt-out. I prefer that anyone using my personal information or data be required to get my explicit permission to use it, rather than requiring me to contact each and ask them to not use it.

  • Bad TOS bad for business (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hca ( 735075 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @03:49PM (#11945999)
    Last summer we reviewed using Yahoo's small business product to host our site, and handle our email, but their TOS had the same boilerplate in it. It required that anything we had on their system -- files, website, emails was available for them to resell or republish as their own content. Obvious non-starter, and our complaint about the issue was ignored so we didn't use the service.

  • No changes, just re-formatting. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Transcendent ( 204992 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @04:14PM (#11946258)
    America Online Inc. plans to make three small but significant modifications to the terms of service for its AIM instant messaging product to head off a firestorm of privacy-related criticisms.

    In an earlier slashdot article (too lazy to get the link), it was mentioned that the terms of service was misinterpreted by someone, and that it was *never implied* that private IM conversations were to be snooped upon, saved, or so forth.

    We never lost out privacy, some idiot just misread it and this most recent change is in an attempt to make it "idiot-proof" for the future.

    • Re:No changes, just re-formatting. (Score:4, Informative)

      by acaben ( 80896 ) * <bstanfield.gmail@com> on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @04:34PM (#11946458)
      I believe you're suggesting that I'm that "idiot," since I'm the guy who read the Terms of Service on Friday and posted the blog entry that set off this brouhaha.

      While your propensity for name-calling is no doubt unequaled, your ability to state the facts in this case is not so good.

      Every legal analysis I've seen so far from real lawyers (here's one [macslash.org], and here's another [eweek.com].) says that my interpretation of the Terms of Service was correct, and the AOL spokesperson was misleading. So, sorry to inform you that there was, in fact, no misreading. However, I may still be an idiot. The jury's still out. :)

  • shut up already (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Turn-X Alphonse ( 789240 ) on Tuesday March 15, 2005 @04:29PM (#11946394) Journal
    So many people are going "YAY THE LITTLE GUY WON!", well no the little guy didn't do ANYTHING! AOL was never going to read how little janey is sleeping with Jamie today but Dave tomorrow. They couldn't careless what crap you put in an IM as long as you click an ad once in a while.

    Changing a couple of words (AKA addding "oh the forums") doesn't mean "the little guy won". It means AOL spend a tiny amount of money to correct an error they made everyone made a song and dance about.

    Well done little guy you cost AOL about 0.00001% of their money on a lawyer! Time to take down Microsoft now!

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