AOL Changing IM Terms of Service 229
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."
Nice (Score:5, Funny)
They came, they saw.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well (Score:2, Informative)
Even though they are on the surface doing something good, it is still setting a bad and dangerous precedent.
Re:They came, they saw.... (Score:2)
Too little, too late (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Funny)
Circumventing a content protection scheme. Shame on them. Where's the DMCA when you need it?
Re:Too little, too late (Score:2)
Not unless you have a few spare millions of bucks to spend on a decade-long series of court cases.
Re:Too little, too late (Score:2)
Last week we mistakenly reported that lobbyists, representing minimum wage workers who contributed heavily to lawmakers' reelection campaigns, used their clout to force a robust increase in the minimum wage. In fact these workers have no lobbyists, no money to contribute and no clout to use, and the bill favors business interests. We apologize for any confusion resulting from the error.
Re:Too little, too late (Score:2)
hmmmm... maybe then I'll construct a language where I'll drop consonants from the ends of my words, and on occasional words, I'll take the first consonant-sound of the word I mean to say, and replace the rest of the word with "izzle". It'll be so inane that Microsoft will never guess it....
fo' shizzle.
Re:Too little, too late (Score:2, Funny)
First I move all the consonants up to the first vowel in the word I am "translating" to the end of the word. After that is completely I append "ay" to the end of the word.
Microsoft will never know is being written... ever!
Coupled with the unbreakable rot 13 code, it's almost impossible to read.
Lbhnl nirunl bganl hfgwnl rnqenl vfgunl ragraprfnl.
pr0n (Score:4, Funny)
man, I wonder who they needed the second part of that for.
'oh good, it's just porn, little jimmy isn't getting into anything wrong. Let me check the Microsoft dictionary just in case... Pornography!!!'
Re:Too little, too late (Score:2)
This isn't a parent's primer, it's a fucking retard's primer.
Re:Too little, too late (Score:2)
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
Maybe you'd be better off encoding all of your instant messages as quotes from British comedies translated into Latin.
Re:Too little, too late (Score:2)
Re:Too little, too late (Score:2)
From TFA... (Score:5, Insightful)
"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...
Re:From TFA... (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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)
Re:From TFA... (Score:2)
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:2)
Legal fees?!
I thought IBM was just paying for our entertainment!
Re:From TFA... (Score:2)
Re:From TFA... (Score:2)
And that's why you record all your conversations with lawyers
Re:From TFA... (Score:4, Insightful)
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)
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)
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)
Re:Makes you wonder... (Score:2)
Why wonder when the reason is readily available if you're willing to actaully investigate? Or even just read the posted TOS to begin with, rather than someone's interpretation of it?
The clause covers POSTINGS, not MESSAGES.
I don't know about you all ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I don't know about you all ... (Score:2)
bye bye (Score:4, Funny)
donnyspi signed off at 13:56:26 PM
AOL's new motto (Score:5, Funny)
From information gathered by reading your private messages, we've decided to retract former policies.
For once (Score:2, Insightful)
Props to AOL, looks like I can once again log in and chat without fear of them retaining rights to it.
Re:For once (Score:2)
Re:For once (Score:2)
It was more like "Oh my gosh, these people are so stupid that they can't read! We'd better dumb down or TOS a little!"
Not that I mind having an easier-to-comprehend TOS, but if people could just read this never would have happened.
From TFA... (Score:5, Informative)
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)
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:And directly from... (Score:2)
Re:And directly from... (Score:2)
I was, however, mentioned during the prior
Re:And directly from... (Score:2)
Re:And directly from... (Score:2)
Re:And directly from... (Score:2)
And because they can do it, they of course are doing it?
...
Re:And directly from... (Score:2)
Don't be silly. The previous poster's point was that they can do it, so protestations that they can't do it are mistaken at best. Whether or not they do do it is not a matter of technical capability. They can if they decide to.
Re:And directly from... (Score:2)
Re:From TFA... (Score:2)
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)
because (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Don't you people watch Law and Order? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't you people watch Law and Order? (Score:3, Insightful)
Dinivin
Funny moderators (Score:2)
Re:Don't you people watch Law and Order? (Score:2)
"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)
Re:Don't you people watch Law and Order? (Score:2)
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)
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)
Angry USians? (Score:2)
Re:Funny USians (Score:2)
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.
Europeans, Asians... (Score:2)
So does AOL listen? (Score:5, Insightful)
what they forgot to mention (Score:2, Insightful)
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)
They also mention..
How it's being spun ... (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
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)
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)
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)
At least one thing your parents told you was true (Score:5, Funny)
Re:At least one thing your parents told you was tr (Score:2)
Re:At least one thing your parents told you was tr (Score:2)
Re:So..... (Score:2)
Nice to see (Score:2)
Re:Nice to see (Score:2, Insightful)
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)
because of SLASHDOT?!?!? (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Re:because of SLASHDOT?!?!? (Score:2)
Re:because of SLASHDOT?!?!? (Score:3, Informative)
~Lake
Re:because of SLASHDOT?!?!? (Score:2)
Re:because of SLASHDOT?!?!? (Score:2)
Slashdot isn't even one of the top 25 message boards [big-boards.com] on the net anymore. It's small time.
Thank you...but... (Score:2)
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)
very costly (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
Re:very costly (Score:2)
Re:very costly (Score:2, Funny)
Re:very costly (Score:2)
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)
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?
Re:Lets say it was 500 gigs per day just to meet i (Score:2)
Your math is fuzzy and wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
You just didn't even begin to factor in anything but the pure cost of 1 gigabyte in some situations, a 500 gig drive is not $500.
Re:Your math is fuzzy and wrong (Score:2)
Re:Your math was :) (Score:2)
Maybe not six-shooters. How about sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads? :)
Pretty cool (Score:2)
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.
Have fun patting yourself on the back (Score:2)
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)
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)
No changes, just re-formatting. (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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)
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!
Re:Blag (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ditch them anyway - untrustworthy (Score:2)