Jerry wrote:

> In article <3782A362.13305087@ask.me>, Mrs Beasley <jus### [at] askme> wrote:
>
> >For those that have sites on XOOM or Tripod, read those TOSs as well.  They
> >have the same type of  wording.  As a matter of fact, if you read the TOS for
> >Tripod and XOOM the wording is almost identical to that of Yahoo.  A lot of
> >
> >You grant to XOOM.com and its affiliates a royalty-free, perpetual,
> irrevocable,
> >nonexclusive, worldwide, unrestricted license to use, copy,
> >modify, transmit, distribute, and publicly perform or display the
> >submitted pages or other content for  the purposes of displaying
> >such information on XOOM.com's sites and for the
> >promotion and marketing of XOOM.com's services. XOOM.com
> >disclaims ownership of member sites and will not resell or
> >otherwise convey these rights to any third party.
>
> While the "perpetual, irrevocable" is still bothersome, XOOM at least does
> not give itself the right to sublicense, and limits the rights to use only
> for the purpose of maintaining the site, and for promotion and marketing
> of the site. While "promotion and marketing" could well be construed
> broadly, it is at least *some* limitation, which is more than Yahoo's
> limitation.

I think this is the key difference between the XOOM and Geocities agreements.
It's almost identical the same way that the terms"tax avoidance" and "tax
evasion" are almost identical, but the IRS will be quite happy to help you learn
the difference.  :-)

Seriously, the main problem with the Geocities one is that
1) Geocities does not include "for the purposes of" in the sentence on license.
2) They do not disclaim reselling.
3) They have the right to sub-license to third parties.

Their letter tries to rationalize these, but it is not quite there. Of course,
they added a sentence at the begining that tends to narrow the gap, so it might
not be so bad. But, it is still important to call them on it.

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