Word: aol
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...than not, no one really cares. But perhaps we should pay more attention to the content of these curious provisos—these End-User License Agreements (EULAs) that accompany most any piece of software. If the new changes to the terms of service of one of America Online (AOL) Inc.’s most popular applications are any indication, it’s easy to pull a fast one on unassuming customers without any real accountability. In their current, indecipherable form, however, it’s safe to assume that people will continue to “agree?...
...worse, apparently. Consider this gem from the newest version of the terms of service for the AOL Instant Messenger service (AIM): “...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...
It’s not entirely clear that a license agreement like this one is sufficiently powerful in the eyes of the law to do what it claims to, but I sure wouldn’t want to be the one to find out. AOL has flatly denied in press releases this week that the sections of the agreement quoted above apply to person-to-person communications (and indeed that they log such communications at all), claiming instead that they’re reserving only control over content posted to public forums. That’s pretty creepy...
AOL’s terms of service are written by lawyers being paid by AOL, accountable to AOL executives. Apart from the (relatively weak) possibility that this particular contract wouldn’t hold up to judicial scrutiny because it wasn’t displayed in a sufficiently prominent place or because it violates in some technical way an obscure subsection of an obscure decades-old law, there is no recourse against any decision AOL makes to exercise the rights they’ve granted themselves. After all, you agreed to give AOL these rights in exchange...
...with most conundrums in technology law, there is no easy answer. AOL has no incentive to change their terms of service to something friendlier because they possess an enormous amount of inertia that makes it unlikely their users will switch away from their product. Even if users are sufficiently disgruntled to the point that they would do so if they knew this clause was present, we’ve already established that most users almost certainly haven’t read the terms of service to begin with. It’s possible to encrypt AIM conversations so that AOL...