What's yours is yours... kinda
I've been reading the Terms & Conditions on the Bright Kite site (yes, I do that sometimes), I came across this pearler:
"What’s yours is yours. You own your User Content, not us. You grant the Company and its affiliates a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, publicly perform and publicly display your User Content (in whole or in part) and/or to incorporate such your User Content in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed. You also grant each user of the Site the right to access, display, view, store and reproduce such your User Content for personal use. You represent and warrant to the Company that you have the right to grant the licenses stated above."
I can't think of a relevant definition of "mine" that grants you a "perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free right and license to" do whatever the hell you want with "my" stuff. Wouldn't it have been more accurate to start with: "What's yours is ours"?
This work by Justin Tauber is licensed under a
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Justin Tauber - recovering philosopher and user experience architect.
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Comments
If you don't grant them a
If you don't grant them a license then they can't display your content to others, making it pointless adding any content there. Most everything else follows from that. Most, but not all.
If a smart marketing droid wrote that page, they'd follow "what's yours is yours" with "we provide a platform for you to use which [does stuff] with your content ... but to do that we first need your permission", followed then by the legalese licence. Alas, they seldom do.
On the positive, they do say "non-exclusive", which means you can also license it to anyone else. They also don't include in the licence a right for them to further licence your content to 3rd parties, nor do they include "transferable" ... which might well bite them if they ever get bought out by someone else.
On the negative, they also say "irrevocable". That one word there is the most obnoxious. If you decide to delete your account and content, take your bat & ball, and go home ... then they can continue using your content, regardless.
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