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...tid=158&tid=17

Next stop: your soul!

[Azselendor]

Score one for Homeland Security and the end of your civil rights!

[Richard]

I don't think it has anything to do with Homeland Security, they could have easily put in a clause for something like this. No it sounds like they want to own everything that goes through their network. How does this work for groups of developers, at many Fortune 500 companies, who use AOL IM to discuss or send code around while their working on a project. Or heck just about anything else.

This just sounds way too vague to hold up in court. What is content anyway, that's going to be the clause that hurts them.

[Azselendor]

Actually, AOL is probally gonna use this for marketing and such, however, at the current time, business has near unlimited power to spy and monitor people. While people are protected from being monitored by the government, who can say the same about businesses being monitored by the government?

It goes back to the idea of a gov't office "Total Information Awareness" or something like that name which was shot down several times, so the people who thought of it pooled their money and created a private corporation to do it instead.

[Instar]

Disturbing news... but it is their network. They physically own it. It is up to the courts to decide if the IM network is analogous to the phone system, where you have to get a wiretap order or court order to record anything.
Personally, I think the IM network is similar to the phone network, just because I say something on AT&T's phone network, it doesn't belong to them.

[Atrocities]

No the reason for them claiming ownership is simply to use the information in the IM's to promote adverstising as well as to spy on their clients and perhaps blackmail them.

Companies for years have laid claim to IM, Email, and other forums of written communications as THIER property. My former employer stated that they owned all emails, phone messages, calls, and so on.

The funny thing is, a person, with an exceptional lawyer, could sue the hell out of AOL if some sick bastard made a date with their kid and then met up with them and an assualt or worse occured. HELL if they own the message then they assume full responsiblity for the content and INTENT of the message. Sue the AOL greedy bastards to hell and then sue again Ike just hurt the greedy bastards.

[PvK]

Too late. All your IM are belong to AOL.

[Mindi]

Someone set us up the bomb