Jon A. Cruz wrote:
> They have a new aggreement that includes a clause that basically says
> they get to use whatever you post in whatever way they feel, forever and
> at no charge.

and after some discussion, Marc Schimmler wrote:
> Somebody should warn Chris Colefax if hasn't been warned yet!

Thanks to Lance and others I have been duly notified - gratitude to all
for showing such concern!  In response I've taken the time to read
through the new and revised Terms of Service, and various objections
that have been raised elsewhere on the web.  If you could forgive me for
being a little moderate, it seems to me to be a question (as always) of
interpretation.

The line from Yahoo themselves seems to be that the "broad" language is
required to allow them to better host/mirror the sites, and in this vein
the references to "adapt, publish, translate..." and "technology now
known or later developed" could be seen simply as allowing them to
reformat pages for WebTV/spoken word browsers, etc.  On the other hand,
"the purpose of displaying and distributing such Content on our network
of properties and for the promotion and marketing of *our* services" (my
emphasis) is fairly explicit!

For me, the most 'interesting' phrase is "royalty-free, perpetual,
irrevocable, non-exclusive ... right and license".  I can live with the
first (I've never paid them a cent, so what do I expect!), and I quite
like the fourth, but the severity of the terms sandwiched in-between is
definitely concerning.

>From a practical point of view it's a matter of weighing up the
alternatives - as has been said, Yahoo's terms aren't much different
from other 'free' services, and Lance has already moaned about the cost
of the net here in Australia so I won't bore you with more "wish I was
over there" sentiments.  My current ISP does offer web space, but it
would mean removing/reducing the AVI and JPG samples on my site.

Truth be told I've quite enjoyed GeoCities hosting my site - the steady
web and email addresses have been great as I move from ISP to ISP, and
the hosting service has been bigger and better than any of the local
ISP's I've tried so far.  The pop-up's were admittedly irritating, but
it didn't take much to remove them, and the replacement banner ad's seem
to be pretty much par for the course in these heady, commercial days.

As it is consumer pressure may yet effect more amendments to Yahoo's
policy, and at any rate I can't currently 'sign-up' properly with
Yahoo-GeoCities due to an error with their server (an ominous sign,
perhaps?!), so I have yet to bind myself to anything definite....

Post a reply to this message