Your data, your rights: how fair are online storage services?
Summary: Google caused a flap this week with seemingly unfair terms of service for its new Google Drive service. But are those terms really different from the competition? I've gathered equivalent terms from Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Dropbox, and more, so you can judge for yourself.
With the launch of Google Drive this week, Google stirred up a hornet's nest, thanks to its inclusion of terms of service that appear to grant it more rights than it needs.
As I noted last night, this isn't a new controversy. Dropbox suffered a similar public backlash last summer over similar wording. In July 2011, I reviewed the terms of service for every major online file-sharing service so you can see for yourself what right you give up when you use any of these services.
This post takes a fresh look at those terms of service.
The following text is taken from the publicly available terms of service for popular cloud-based file storage services.*
All text is copied directly from the linked terms of service pages as of April 25, 2012. It is possible, indeed likely, that companies listed here will change these terms in the future. Do not rely on these excerpts to make any decisions without consulting the current terms and getting your own, independent legal advice.
These terms are unchanged from those in effect in July 2011.
8.1 Your Content. As between you and us, you or your licensors own all right, title, and interest in and to Your Content. Except as provided in this Section 8, we obtain no rights under this Agreement from you or your licensors to Your Content, including any related intellectual property rights. You consent to our use of Your Content to provide the Service Offerings to you and any End Users. We may disclose Your Content to provide the Service Offerings to you or any End Users or to comply with any request of a governmental or regulatory body (including subpoenas or court orders).
These terms are similar to those provided by the MobileMe service, which iCloud replaced.
Content Submitted or Made Available by You on the Service
License from You
Except for material we may license to you, Apple does not claim ownership of the materials and/or Content you submit or make available on the Service. However, by submitting or posting such Content on areas of the Service that are accessible by the public or other users with whom you consent to share such Content, you grant Apple a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Service solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available, without any compensation or obligation to you. You agree that any Content submitted or posted by you shall be your sole responsibility, shall not infringe or violate the rights of any other party or violate any laws, contribute to or encourage infringing or otherwise unlawful conduct, or otherwise be obscene, objectionable, or in poor taste. By submitting or posting such Content on areas of the Service that are accessible by the public or other users, you are representing that you are the owner of such material and/or have all necessary rights, licenses, and authorization to distribute it.
Changes to Content
You understand that in order to provide the Service and make your Content available thereon, Apple may transmit your Content across various public networks, in various media, and modify or change your Content to comply with technical requirements of connecting networks or devices or computers. You agree that the license herein permits Apple to take any such actions.
Box (formerly Box.net)
The company has changed its name slightly (dropping the .net). These terms incorporate the new name but otherwise have not changed since last summer.
D. USER CONDUCT/ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY.
[…]
To the extent that the Services provide Users an opportunity to store and exchange information, materials, data, files, programs, ideas and opinions (“User Content”), you hereby represent and warrant that you have all necessary rights in and to all User Content you provide and all information contained therein. By registering to use the Services, you understand and acknowledge that Box and its contractors retain an irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use, copy, and publicly display such content for the sole purpose of providing to you the Services for which you have registered. In the event that you give Box the right to distribute your content, additional terms may apply to Box's usage or distribution of this content. You continue to retain all ownership rights in any User Content you provide and shall remain solely responsible for your conduct, your User Content, and any material or information transmitted to other Users for interaction with other Users. Box does not claim any ownership rights in any User Content.
The company has revised these terms since last summer. In general, those revisions appear to have been for the specific purpose of making their intent clearer. I wish every tech company would write agreements that were this clear and free of jargon.
Your Stuff & Your Privacy
By using our Services you provide us with information, files, and folders that you submit to Dropbox (together, “your stuff”). You retain full ownership to your stuff. We don’t claim any ownership to any of it. These Terms do not grant us any rights to your stuff or intellectual property except for the limited rights that are needed to run the Services, as explained below.
We may need your permission to do things you ask us to do with your stuff, for example, hosting your files, or sharing them at your direction. This includes product features visible to you, for example, image thumbnails or document previews. It also includes design choices we make to technically administer our Services, for example, how we redundantly backup data to keep it safe. You give us the permissions we need to do those things solely to provide the Services. This permission also extends to trusted third parties we work with to provide the Services, for example Amazon, which provides our storage space (again, only to provide the Services).
To be clear, aside from the rare exceptions we identify in our Privacy Policy, no matter how the Services change, we won’t share your content with others, including law enforcement, for any purpose unless you direct us to. How we collect and use your information generally is also explained in our Privacy Policy.
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Talkback
the people must choose google
Too many options are confusing and people should coalesce around the market leader for online services and advertising to avoid fragmentation.
Google's competitors are just some lame "me too" and "Johny come late".
Ads and Data Don't Go Together
Then don't trust te other advertising company!
Use, copy, distribute, display, publish, and modify your customer data;
Publish your name in connection with the customer data; and
Facilitate others ability to do the same."
And
"You understand that Microsoft may need, and you hereby grant Microsoft the right, to use, modify, adapt, reproduce, distribute, and display content posted on the service solely to the extent necessary to provide the service."
Right there it spells out Microsoft's intent, which is to sell access to your data. Remember Microsoft is really pushing Bing, so they are willing to play fast and loose with your data to sell ads. There is no need to publish, and distribute, your data, to provide the storage of said data.
Third parties are those you specify, not MS
Learn to read TOS before you post.
At no time in those quoted above does MS cite anything about third-parties they engage.
Of course, other clauses may state who MS may engage.
Your feeble attempt to try and tarnish MS with the poor customer privacy support of Google FAILED. There are likely other areas where MS may be dubious, but you are obviously too lazy to go find them yourself.
Patanjali
Nice editing.
***********************************
Why'd you cut off the paragraph? You left out the part that reads "[b]solely to the extent necessary to provide the service[/b]
Hallowed are the Ori
Stick to the topic rather than your perverted ideology
No-one here is giving MS a blanket pass here, but in this case, they are provided a far less invasive co-opting of uploaded data than Google.
But you insist on your stupid and irrelevant rant about MS being bad, and deliberately ignoring obvious restrictions they undertake to fulfil.
Pathetic reality distortion on your part really.
@Jack
You really can't be that f*n stupid, are you?
ultimitloozer
No, but it seem you can. Microsoft has been proven to abuse any license they issue.There is a long, and well documented history of Microsoft abusing their customers, and the end users. After seeing Microsoft's latest scams, they are showing the willingness to do the same things that got them into trouble in the past again. I is the corporate culture at Microsoft that is corrupt. Microsoft believes that racketeering, extortion, and other corrupt business practices are a good thing. Had the original judge not let the vile creatures at Microsoft get under his skin, the world would be a much better place today.
Patanjali:
"No-one here is giving MS a blanket pass here, but in this case, [b]they are provided a far less invasive co-opting of uploaded data than Google.[/b]"
Two words: "Prove it". Oh wait you can't, because it's not true. You Microsoft fanboys rail against the competition, and always give Microsoft a [b]blanket pass[/b]
During the Antenna-gate rants, there were several WP 7 phones that had signal issues if you held the phone in a seemingly normal way. The HTC Touch Pro 2 I was issued at work also had an Antenna-gate issue. So maybe Mr. Jobs was right?
Location-gate, Apple was wrong for not encrypting the data, but Microsoft was doing something even worse. They were collecting location data tied to the specific phone, and keeping it on their Bing servers. before the Man-goo update, you could simply go to Bing Maps, enter the Phone's Wifi address (wireless MAC address), and track the phones location without the user knowing it.
www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2394009,00.asp
What struck me odd about that, is the creepy stalker effect. But Microsoft was given a pass on these things. Apple also got lambasted when an update bricked Jailbroken phones, even though Apple said they couldn't guaranty it would work on modified phones. Microsoft was given a pass when the pre "No-doo" update bricked untouched phones. Are you seeing a pattern here? Attack the company without a history of abuse, while ignoring the company that has a long and well documented history of abuse.
I don't disagree but...
I don't get it - you're a Linux Geek & too many options are confusing. Oh wait, I *do* get it - too many options is why more people don't use Linux! Just an observation, not a criticism...
Spot on...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO6XEQIsCoM
Market Consolidation
I don't understand the hostility in this privacy discussion. But I would say that users should NEVER put any files on a cloud server that they wouldn't want other people to see. I've actually reviewed some of the safer cloud storage services on my site....http://www.top10cloudstorage.com/online-backup/
Check it out if you've got a minute!
Hey, you! Back under the bridge!
Topics
you covered several companies in your article, yet you listed only Microsoft Corp in your Topic list at the bottom. Is there a reason for this?
The topic list is generated automatically
Nilay Patel of the Verge
http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2973849/google-drive-terms-privacy-data-skydrive-dropbox-icloud
Agreed
Nice article...
I like how Apple requires your content not to be in poor taste
You post some pictures of someone with a checked shirt and striped pants and you've just violated the TOS :-).