Scary New AOL IM Terms of Service

Posted March 13, 2005, 12:24 p.m.

From the new AOL Instant Messenger terms of service:

“In addition, 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. You waive any right to inspect or approve uses of the Content or to be compensated for any such uses.”

This is, of course, BS. First, many users (like me) have never been prompted to agree to this new TOS and therefore cannot be bound by it. Second, software terms of service are not binding contracts anyway. Third, despite AOL’s claims, terms of service do not trump copyright law and authors retain unlimited right to control distribution of their works—even over IM. But the fact that AOL even claims these rights (even though they wouldn’t last 16 seconds in court) is very, very disturbing.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.

Quotes

The Parthenon was not built as a ruin.

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort.

We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.

If you establish a censorship of the press, the tongue of the public speaker will still make itself heard, and you have only increased the mischief.

No matter what you or anyone else does, there will be someone who says that there’s something bad about it.

I recommend that you improve your psychological bravery but say no to anything that has a strong chance of killing you.

I have never seen a thin person drinking Diet Coke.

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

The science of religion is one science within philosophy; indeed it is the final one.

When [civilzation] wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round.

Science spotlights three dimensions of nature that point to God. The first is the fact that nature obeys laws. The second is [that intelligent life] arose from matter. The third is the very existence of nature.

The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.

Natural selection does not positively produce anything. It only eliminates, or tends to eliminate, whatever is not competitive.

You may drive out nature with a pitchfork, yet she still will hurry back.

But you can be certain, you want-to-be tyrants, that your slaves will take their revenge where they can, even if that means merely being much less than they could be.

Christianity doesn’t begin by telling people what they must do, but what God has done for them. Gift comes before duty.

Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes.

God prefers a loving sinner to a loveless ‘saint.’ Love can be trained; pride cannot.

My discovery of the divine has been a pilgrimage of reason and not of faith.

State power is no more to be used so as to handicap religions than it is to favor them.

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