Gmail's terms of service

Grok Headline matches for Gmail's terms of service

Gilmore on Gmail's terms-of-service

Gilmore on Gmail's terms-of-service 04/09/2004 04:05 PM
John Gilmore has given me permission ot publish his very sharp analysis of Google's Gmail draft terms-of-service. As it stands, the ToS have some really objectionable elements. Google has a notation to the effect that this is a draft document and they are soliciting feedback on it to gmail-feedback@google.com. If these terms bother you, you could send polite feedback to Google about the parts that you find worrisome.

If they allege a "technical issue", including spam filtering, then they can access, read, preserve, and disclose anything in your mailbox. Since they probably do spam filtering for everybody (both for incoming and outgoing mail), then they have the right to read and disclose the contents of your email at any time.

Many spam-filtering services send copies of alleged spams to some central location. If they get N copies of similar messages, they declare it spam and publish the offending messages on the web. Google's right to send your spam to such services gives them the right to send ANY of your email to ANYONE -- for publication.

Link (Thanks, John!)

"terms of service"

"terms of service" 03/14/2005 05:53 PM

AIM Terms of Service

AIM Terms of Service 03/14/2005 04:47 PM

AIM Terms of Service: "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. "

So, basically, don't say anything on AIM that you would not like to see displayed on the jumbotron or (perhaps, someday) re-enacted on Time Warner's new AIM-dialog based reality TV show.

AOL Clarifies Terms of Service for AIM

AOL Clarifies Terms of Service for AIM 03/17/2005 04:22 AM
America Online has clarified the terms of service for AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) in response to a firestorm of criticism that was sparked when bloggers objected to language concerning users' privacy. AOL has modified the "Content You Post" section to reiterate that user-to-user communications will remain private.

AOL fixes its terms of service

AOL fixes its terms of service 03/17/2005 03:56 AM
Cory Doctorow: When AOL got called out on its Terms of Service giving it ownership of your private instant messages and requiring you to waive your privacy rights, it went into spin mode. It gave press interviews saying that it didn't intend to use the agreement that it exacted from its users to abuse their privacy, and said that besides, Microsoft's terms of service were just as bad or worse (hardly a ringing endorsement!).

Now, though, AOL has done the right and substantive thing in response: it has rewritten its terms of service so that they clearly distinguish between the messages you post to public areas and the private messages you send to your friends. This is absolutely the way that AOL should be handling this, and they deserve to be congratulated for it. Link (Thanks, Andrew!)

AOL weasels about its Terms of Service

AOL weasels about its Terms of Service 03/14/2005 05:29 PM
Cory Doctorow: Last night, I blogged about AOL's terms-of-service for its services, in which you waive your privacy right. AOL has done some interviews objecting to this, saying that the terms are only intended to reach to message-board postings.

I don't buy it for a second. If AOL meant "you waive privacy in your message board postings and not your AIM messages" they could say so.

And if they won't say so, why should we believe them? Link

Update: J sez, "Apple's .Mac service lets you use the AIM network without clicking through AOL's TOS at all (you get to use your username@mac.com as your AIM name), and the .Mac TOS says nothing at all about AIM or AOL, and neither does Apple's privacy statement, which you agree to when agreeing to the .Mac TOS."

VoIP terms of service suck

VoIP terms of service suck 08/10/2004 08:59 AM
Salshdot takes note of the terrible Terms of Service from many of the major voice-over-IP providers, including Vonage. I nearly bought a Vonage subscription three times last year, but each time, their ToS changed my mind. Who wants to do business with a company that makes you agree to something really unreasonable before they'll take your money?

he prime example is Vonage, which states among other things that 'If Vonage, in its sole discretion believes that you have violated the above restrictions, Vonage may forward the objectionable material, as well as your communications with Vonage and your personally identifiable information to the appropriate authorities for investigation and prosecution and you hereby consent to such forwarding.'"

"Don't forget the obligatory 'we can change these terms of service whenever we like and they become effective immediately when posted to our website.' Read for yourself here(1), here(2), and here(3). I won't put up with this kind of thing in my software and I certainly won't put up with it from my phone company!"

I'm surprised that more VoIP companies don't tout their ToS as competitive advantages over Vonage -- "Sure they've got a great rate plan, but if they think you're doing something naughty, they'll rat you out to the Feds." Link

VoIP Terms of Service May Surprise You

VoIP Terms of Service May Surprise You 08/10/2004 08:31 AM

Search Engines' Restrictive Terms of
Service

Search Engines' Restrictive Terms of
Service 01/23/2004 02:21 PM
Dan Shafer is alarmed by what look like onerous terms of service at Google and Yahoo. He raises good questions.

AOL's Terms of Service Update for AIM
Raises Eyebrows

AOL's Terms of Service Update for AIM
Raises Eyebrows 03/14/2005 04:32 PM
America Online makes several changes to the AIM terms of service, including the co-ownership of any content passed through the instant messaging network.

You get what you pay for - Walmart's 88
cent tunes are Windows only and have a
bogus Terms of Service

You get what you pay for - Walmart's 88
cent tunes are Windows only and have a
bogus Terms of Service 12/23/2003 08:24 AM
Lessig tells us what's wrong with it .. attackagainst Wal-Mart’s new .. blog entry from Lawrence Lessig .. WalMart's way to the future .. licensing agreement

lessig.org/blog/archives/001647.shtml
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Gmail's new promise

Gmail's new promise 04/15/2004 02:16 PM

I can't believe how much flak Google is getting over gmail. Hotmail and Yahoo feature 5 or more obnoxious ads on every page view, plus advertising in each and every mail they send out, but Google creates a better version of web mail and we have state representitives introd ucing laws to ban the service before it even launches.

Has the whole world gone crazy?!

They've gone and updated their policy at gmail, and it boggles my mind that they even have to go to such great lengths to explain how their subtle ads aren't the new red menace.

They should introduce a new promise for gmail users. Every message that gets sent to a gmail account will result in a kitten getting petted one time. They could rival the old fishcam at Netscape, by having a big room with a kitten-petting robot showing everyone how much love the kittens are getting from the PetBot2000. And remember, no humans would be involved in the kitten petting.

Would that make things better finally?

More on Gmail's Virtues and Dangers

More on Gmail's Virtues and Dangers 04/17/2004 09:57 AM

Tim O'Reilly finds much to praise in Google's upcoming Gmail service, and is much less concerned about the privacy issues than I am. We agree totally, however on a crucial issue: preventing data lock-in. He says:

"The big question to me isn't privacy, or control over software APIs, it's who will own the data. What's critical is that gmail makes a commitment to data migration capabilities, so the service isn't a one way door to the future. I want to be able to switch to alternate providers if the competition makes a better offer. The critical enabler is going to be the ability to extract my data and connections so that I can work with them on multiple devices, for example, syncing my laptop or phone with my gmail account rather than having to work only in a tethered fashion. I understand why gmail doesn't offer this feature now, but it's going to be essential in the long term."

Amen.

Blinded by Gmail's Gigabyte?

Blinded by Gmail's Gigabyte? 04/16/2004 09:12 PM
Okay, this is getting too stupid. Even Tim O'Reilly seems to be sucked in by Google's reality distortion field now. I guess they've been taking lessons from Steve Jobs, because Tim usually isn't this easily excited by non-innovation. (Or maybe Tim was an early investor in Google? Anyone know?) Gmail is fascinating to me as a watershed event in the evolution of the internet. In a brilliant Copernican stroke, gmail turns everything on its head, rejecting the personal computer as...

in praise of gmail's technology

in praise of gmail's technology 07/09/2004 12:12 AM
as always, the whining overshadowed some truly impressive coding

Gmail's Similarities To Gator

Gmail's Similarities To Gator 04/26/2004 02:13 AM
ClickZ has an article that points out for all the complaints about Google's Gmail offering, one area that people haven't really explored is how it's actually similar to Gator in certain ways. Of course, since so many people hate Gator, this will automatically be seen as a negative - but what people hate about Gator is that it gets installed without the user knowing it, which isn't the case with Gmail. Also, Gator covers up other sites with popups from competitors, while Gmail just place regular text ads off to the side. However, there are some similarities - and you can imagine that companies will get upset when they find out that next to their own email marketing there is an ad for a competitor. How long until a merchant sues? There have been a number of similar cases against Gator (and others) and the results have been mixed depending on the judge. I stand by my position that throwing up competitors ads by itself should be perfectly legal - as long as the user knows what's happening and the software hasn't been put on their machine without their knowledge. Still, not everyone sees it that way - and it's likely that an annoyed retailer will sue. Another option, as suggested by Jeremy Wagstaff, is that companies that advertise by email will move to alternatives like RSS. Of course, once Gmail adds an RSS news aggregator to their Gmail product they'll face the same issue. Maybe, instead of worrying so much about competitors' ads showing up, they should just focus on making sure their product is something people want.

Gmail's Birthday Presents

Gmail's Birthday Presents 04/01/2005 11:30 AM

Google to increase Gmail's inbox to 2GB
and more

Google to increase Gmail's inbox to 2GB
and more 04/01/2005 08:22 AM
Google on Friday plans to increase the in-box storage of its Gmail Web mail service from 1GB to 2GB, and it will continue to raise that ceiling in coming weeks and months, on a rolling basis, to unspecified heights, according to a Google executive.

Testing Gmail's Spam filters

Testing Gmail's Spam filters 06/14/2004 11:32 AM
Ever wonder how long it takes to fill 1GB of mail space with spam? Aaron Pratt ( prattboy@gmail.com ) is trying to find out. He has asked people to give his email out to as many newsletters, spammers, any kind of annoying mail that he can recieve. You can see some of his results here (mirror) More…

Using Up Gmail's Lifetime Supply Of
Space... And Looking For The Delete Key

Using Up Gmail's Lifetime Supply Of
Space... And Looking For The Delete Key 08/17/2004 03:23 PM
TDavid writes "The Gmail team has confirmed that there is currently no feature to deal with mass deletion of mail and they do not indicate when or if they will add this functionality. The current choices are either deal with deleting forever mail 50 threads at a time or using a third party script. Not a problem for those who receive 30 emails a day, but a huge issue for those who receive thousands of emails a day, with the vast majority being spam." Funny. I had been wondering the same thing, as I've been messing around with forwarding spam to my Gmail account over the last month (now pushing about 20% capacity, so a bit slower than the example above). One change, though, is that you can set the email box to show 100 threads at a time, rather than 50, which should speed up the delete process slightly. Still, you have to admit that Gmail is a beta product, and it's quite likely they'll add a "delete all spam" feature at some point. Either that, or add an option (found on many other systems) that will automatically delete mail designated as spam after a specific time period (1 week? 1 month?). I'm not sure it does much good to get super angry about a beta email product that clearly tells you you're running out of room, and then... runs out of room. A related question, though, concerns how good the Gmail spam filter actually is. In my tests, it's pretty bad. It appears to catch about 70% of spam, which is much lower than most anti-spam solutions. Of course, with such a low rate, you would figure that there wouldn't be too many false positives, but that's not true either. It tends to catch plenty of legitimate email and tag it as spam. Another thing they will hopefully fix before the system comes out of beta.

News: Google to increase Gmail's inbox
to 2GB and more

News: Google to increase Gmail's inbox
to 2GB and more 04/01/2005 09:41 AM
Google Inc. on Friday plans to increase the in-box storage of its Gmail Web mail service from 1GB to 2GB, and it will continue to raise that ceiling in coming weeks and months, on a rolling basis, to unspecified heights, according to a Google executive.

Hotmail, Others Follow Gmail's Storage
Boost

Hotmail, Others Follow Gmail's Storage
Boost 06/24/2004 06:17 AM

Gmail's Terabyte Glitch Heightens
Storage Race

Gmail's Terabyte Glitch Heightens
Storage Race 05/19/2004 02:52 PM
Google confirms that the 1 terabyte of storage space that test users of its free e-mail service noticed this week was a bug in the system, not a new height in free space.

Issues with Google GMail's Basic HTML
Interface

Issues with Google GMail's Basic HTML
Interface 03/17/2005 03:41 AM
TechWhack Mar 15 2005 9:44AM GMT

Google's Sergey Brin Talks on Gmail's
Future

Google's Sergey Brin Talks on Gmail's
Future 04/24/2004 12:53 PM

Dvd Terms To Know

Dvd Terms To Know 12/04/2003 09:38 AM
SiliconValley.com Dec 4 2003 8:44AM ET

Terms of Use

Terms of Use 12/25/2003 08:07 AM
terms of use

help.xanga.com/about/termsofuse.htm
track this site | 7 links

Blogging terms going mainstream

Blogging terms going mainstream 01/04/2005 07:49 PM
BBC warns regarding dangers of being "dooced" Not long after making the Wired Jargon Watch, I finally got to see the term " ;dooced", in action as the BBC posts an article regarding the growing conflict between employers and employees when it comes to blogging.

DUP deal terms 'unacceptable'

DUP deal terms 'unacceptable' 06/30/2004 08:14 AM
The DUP's terms for a deal to restore devolution in NI are unacceptable, Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams warns.

Most Expensive Terms on Overture

Most Expensive Terms on Overture 03/19/2003 10:43 PM
In the supporters forum: 50 bucks a click for Mesothelioma sounds a bit rich for you? It's all about conversion and ROI.

Do webl0gs need Terms and Conditions?

Do webl0gs need Terms and Conditions? 03/06/2004 01:55 AM

So here's a thought - albeit a short and unconvincing one that hasn't really got much of my heart behind it - about the problem of weblog comment spammers. For those of you who are unaware of the phenomenon, basically it's pretty simple: if your site is linked to by a well linked-to site, then Google ranks you higher in search results. Therefore if you're someone with a desperate need to exploit the unhappy, unconfident or socially awkward by selling them Viagra or weight-loss drugs or 'the banned CD', the apparent best way to claw that little bit further up the greasy pole is to start posting specious comments on people's weblogs filled with links to your commercial sites.

Or at least that's the theory of the soulless evil self-interested wankers who undertake such activities. God knows if it works or not - certainly Google's algorithms aren't public. Moreover, there was a suggestion a while back that only links in which the link-text reflected something on the linked-to page would count for their weighting. So it might not work at all. Nonetheless, it continues and as it does so, each and every time, another weblog owner starts to feel more and more disillusioned with the web in which they operate and about the unscrupulousness of their fellow man. The perpetrators of this kind of spamming aren't committing crimes against humanity, but they're still basically scum. They're people who would spit in your face if you couldn't stop them and they could make a few cents out it.

There are a variety of 'solutions' to this kind of problem of course, with some being instituted in Typepad as we speak while others (like MT-Blacklist ) have been developed by third-party developers.

One possibility that occurs to me that's less technical in scope is a "Terms and Conditions"-style tick-box that you have to click when you post a comment. In the Terms and Conditions could be a statement that posting a comment constitutes an agreement that you will not link to any commercial sites whatsoever and that anyone who does so has basically entered into a tacit agreement to pay for whatever the length of time that link remains on the site at the rate of $100 a day (rounded up to the nearest day). You could then bill the sites concerned via their addresses in whois and take them to the small claims court if they didn't pay-up. I'm fairly sure this wouldn't work on the whole but it might put the wind up a few people and make them think twice about it. Has anyone got any other suggestions?

Read the comments

Health terms not often Googled

Health terms not often Googled 11/05/2003 08:21 PM
Instead, Google and other software gofers spend the bulk of their time hunting for pornography, deals on computer gear, and the latest dirt on favourite ...

Origin of the terms "BCE/CE" for dates?

Origin of the terms "BCE/CE" for dates? 07/12/2004 02:42 AM

A friend who blames Jews for all of the ills that he perceives in American society asked me if it was a Jew who started using "BCE" ("Before the Common Era" rather than BC or "Before Christ") for dates of events that occurred more than 2004 years ago.  Being a scientist and engineer he had only recently come across this coinage and was convinced that it part of a contemporary Jewish plot to deestablish Christianity as America's default religion.

My response was that I believed BCE/CE instead of BC/AD was a bit of 19th century academic pedantry.  I remember seeing the term on yellowed labels next to objects in museums that had been gathering dust for 50+ years.  Given that Jews had only recently escaped from their ghettos in the 19th century and that most classics or Bible scholars would have come from wealthier families, I thought it highly unlikely that a Jew coined the term.  Most likely I thought it was Christian scholars who wished to employ a bit of jargon to make their professional work appear more scientific.  The only etymological reference that I could find was this Word IQ article, that talks about the appearance of the term "Common Era" in a 1908 encyclopedia published by the Roman Catholic Church.

Anyone have a better source for settling this question?  The Oxford English Dictionary and first Supplement don't contain "BCE" or "Common Era".

Google sets its own terms in IPO

Google sets its own terms in IPO 05/01/2004 03:19 AM
Business Day South Africa May 1 2004 7:25AM GMT

2K3 embeds some new terms in our
vocabularies

2K3 embeds some new terms in our
vocabularies 01/03/2004 07:30 PM
Runners-up included the high-tech term blog (Web log, or Internet journal); the newly minted verb google (to rummage through the Web using the search engine ...

Trademarking search terms

Trademarking search terms 11/04/2003 03:38 PM
Many companies use the Google Trademark Complaint Procedure to stop competitors bidding on a company name or product. As this...

DeWitt comes to terms with Cobalt's end

DeWitt comes to terms with Cobalt's end 01/28/2004 08:43 PM
Interview Some things better left unsaid

New AdSense Terms & Features

New AdSense Terms & Features 03/17/2005 02:35 AM
"...new payment options, new ad types (Ad Links), and lots of changes in the terms of service.

Barghouti given five life terms

Barghouti given five life terms 06/06/2004 06:51 AM
An Israeli court gives five life sentences to one of the leaders of the Palestinian uprising, Marwan Barghouti.
Grok Description matches for Gmail's terms of service
GrokA matches for Gmail's terms of service

Gmail's terms of service

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