Word: aol
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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?...
...increasingly almost any person who owns a personal computer, cell phone, or other trendy technological device that allows for epistolary e-interaction. And it stirs paranoia in anyone who generally enjoys the world of impersonal, anti-social online banter. That is, it affects the users of the ubiquitous AOL Instant Messenger...
AOL’s new terms, affecting anyone who downloaded AIM after Feb. 4, 2004 as well as anyone planning to update the program in the future, explain that, “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.” Frightening words, indeed...
...words of JoeSchmoe123 may come back to haunt him someday, when it’s least expected, if AOL is subpoenaed for his AIM transcripts or for a listing of his posts on public forums. Perhaps, entangled in messy separations, angry divorcées will begin calling for their philandering husbands’ online conversations to inflate their settlements. Lives will be ruined and public humiliation imminent, all for seemingly innocuous words typed many years...
...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...