Slashdot just ran a story referring to “AIM‘s New Terms of Service” including a provision granting Time Warner rights to everything you post with it.

License excerpt:

Although you or the owner of the Content retain ownership of all right, title and interest in Content that you post to any AIM Product, AOL owns all right, title and interest in any compilation, collective work or other derivative work created by AOL using or incorporating this Content. 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. [emphasis added]

This doesn’t even appear to be new (the opening clause references 5 Feb 04), which says something about how many people actually read those click-through licenses.

I know most of the stuff on AIM is ephemeral, but this really horks me off all the same. I don’t expect my friends and family to switch to Jabber en masse (though wouldn’t it be nice if ISPs ran Jabber servers like e-mail servers?) but I hope they will consider taking two steps:

• Uninstall the AIM official client and switch to Gaim. Gaim’s free, ad-free, open-source, with multiple network support and the ability to sign in as multiple users simultaneously, plus tabs and all that goodness. (You can even group friends’ accounts under one alias so you know that HotisK, WendysisA, IHateA, etc. are all one person.)
• After getting accustomed to Gaim, add in Gaim Encryption. That way you can talk about, say, your plot to overthrow the government (or even just your love for naked Matt Damon) with the knowledge that AOL won’t replay your conversation in their next asinine commercial. As one Slashdot commenter put it, “Folks, it is time to start putting your letters in an envelope. You can no longer trust the letter carrier to protect your privacy.”

In the long term, however, we need a solution that allows us to track “presence” (available, busy, away) without resorting to services that are little more than walled fiefdoms, subject to the latest corporate whim.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 12th, 2005 at 12:44 am and is filed under Geekery.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.