January 27, 2006
Tyranny of the Baltiblogs
Holy Cow. I saw eebmore posted about new Terms of Service for Baltiblogs, and that he was considering moving because the terms could be seen as encroaching upon his freedom to discuss any number of things in the unique fashion in which he discusses them. Today I noticed a Terrablogs post about the new Terms of Service and decided to take a look to see what all the fuss was about, and noticed a few things that, frankly, shocked me.
For one:
2. Privacy Policy. By using this Service, you agree, without limitation or qualification, to be bound by this Privacy Policy: You have no privacy.
Ooooo-kay...that's pretty vague, and although it might just be a matter of expedience, it's a bit ominous. I guess I don't really put anything here that I wouldn't mind someone else seeing, as it is a blog and all. But still, a bit more finesse in explaining what you inteded to do with my information would be nice.
So I started worrying about things like copyright, and sure enough, further down:
6. Information Rights. The Proprietor does not claim ownership of Content you submit or make available for inclusion on the Service. However, with respect to Content you submit or make available for inclusion on the Service, including without limitation comments you post to the Service, you grant the Proprietor world-wide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty free, non-exclusive, fully sub-licensable license(s) to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other works in any format or medium now known or later developed. (emphasis added)
Whoah! So basically, the price of a free blog is the Terrablogs gets free use of your content. I don't like that one bit, to the point that I am seriously considering moving off Baltiblogs. Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress.com, none of them make these kinds of restrictions. I've been nothing but happy with the service up to this point, in fact, I think the idea of a locale-centered blog portal is a brilliant idea, and a major reason why I chose Baltiblogs to begin with, and Penny and I have always contributed monetarily to the service. And I know Josiah and Nathan fairly well, and would consider them friends. But ownership of content is a big deal, and a deal-breaker, as far as I'm concerned.
As far as I can tell, Terrablogs would have the right to do whatever they wanted with any of my content, including photos I've uploaded. That would include photos on luminouslens or opinion pieces on Soccer Dad.
I'm hoping that we can work something out with Terrablogs, to ammend this clause in the policy. At the very least, I would have hoped that changes of this magnitude would have been communicated to the users in a more personal fashion. The nice thing about Baltiblogs has always been that we are all friends here, yet this is the type of move I would expect from a big corporation. Let's hope we can get this resolved.
Update: I've heard from Josiah and Nathan (see below) and they've been very helpful and are taking care of things. Awesome.
I will add, I am generally appalled by the increasingly common practice of using blogs as a form of interpersonal communication. All the time I see people blogging things as a way to expose a wrongdoing without first communicating with the other party and attempting to resolve things privately. I think it's generally a bad practice, and that we should not lose site of the fact that blogs and other social technology are meant to bring people closer together and enhance communication, not allow us to flame with greater ease and affect. I debated whether or not to post this or to resolve it privately, and made my decision based on the fact that this affected others and had the potential to strengthen the community as a whole if handled properly. That might all be BS, but whatever, I'm on codine.
I'm afraid I haven't had time to be involved at all in the Baltiblogs TOS. And, I will agree that some of the terms look a little scary. However, it is worth noting that if you look at blogger (http://www.blogger.com/terms.g) or typepad (http://www.sixapart.com/typepad_terms), much of the terms are quite similar.
For example, Typepad (#12): "Six Apart does not claim ownership of the Content you place on your Six Apart Blog Site. By submitting Content to Six Apart for inclusion on your Six Apart Blog Site, you grant Six Apart a world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish the Content solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting your Blog Site on Six Apart's Internet properties. This license exists only for as long as you continue to be a Six Apart customer and shall be terminated at the time your Blog Site is terminated."
Or, say, Blogger: "You agree to not use the Service to: (a) upload, post or otherwise transmit any Content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;"
Posted by: maphet at January 27, 2006 11:53 AMI'm cool with the Blogger/vulgar stuff - I think that's done more as protection for the service provider, and likely wouldn't be enforced.
I wasn't aware of the Typepad clause, which, I will say, does surprise me. But even so, compare the language used by Typepad with the TOS for Baltiblogs. In Typepad's case, they are claiming reasonable limited rights that are fully controlled by the content creator (if you dont like it, go someplace else), and stand to benefit the content creator in the process. Baltiblogs TOS is nowhere near as reasonable. If I understand the TOS correctly, Terrablogs can do whatever it likes with all my content that I've published over the past 3 years, and I can't do anything about it, even if I leave the service, despite that no agreement was in place for that past period. It's much, much different, to the point of not even being comparable.
Posted by: Greg at January 27, 2006 12:26 PMAgain, I can't speak for those who actually drafted the TOS. I suspect that it is in there simply for legal protection. But, then, I haven't been invited lately to any of the secret midnight world domination meetings. Hmm ....
All that being said, Josiah has said that there will be some revision and I expect much of this will change.
Posted by: maphet at January 27, 2006 12:31 PMI think I was slightly less upset about the TOS than yourself. Although I do agree that the wording, to say the least, is unfortunate. It does amuse me that my primary concern was not the legaleze, but my freedom to hoo hoo and hee hee jokes.
Posted by: eebmore at January 27, 2006 12:35 PMHost your own! It's not like you've gotta be a genius to toss up an instance of WordPress...
-DMZ
Posted by: DMZ at January 27, 2006 2:41 PMThanks for noticing this. This *is* a problem. I had never noticed it before, or even thought to look it up. The Typepad TOS are better because they limit their use to "the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting your Blog Site on Six Apart's Internet properties". At least, they can't use it for other projects other than TypePad.
Even better, the Typepad TOS isn't "perpetual". Instead they say "This license exists only for as long as you continue to be a Six Apart customer and shall be terminated at the time your Blog Site is terminated."
I might be moving off of Baltiblogs anyway at some point (one day, though I have no specific plans yet), but this would probably nudge me faster.
Posted by: luminouslens at January 27, 2006 3:26 PMHow do the licensing terms work in the context of the creative commons contracts that are available on the configuration pages? I assume that the Terrablogs contract takes precedence but I wonder if the prospect of purchasing content directly from Terrablogs under conditions that conflict with a CC license on the same content bothers the people at creative commons.
Posted by: JB at January 28, 2006 8:42 AM
