Hello
I am currently reading the Terms of Service of Myspace. It is quite interesting. Remember, this is a social networking site, not an encyclopedia/dictionary/textbook/library/etc. As such, one would think that they would be a tad more lax than us. Not so. Note that I not suggesting that these policies are followed or that the millions of Myspace users have actually read them. Nevertheless, it is there in writing. People who sign up agree to this. Perhaps we can learn from them.
Rule 5: Non-commercial Use by Members. The MySpace Services are for the personal use of Members only and may not be used in connection with any commercial endeavors except those that are specifically endorsed or approved by MySpace.com. Illegal and/or unauthorized use of the MySpace Services, including collecting usernames and/or email addresses of Members by electronic or other means for the purpose of sending unsolicited email or unauthorized framing of or linking to the MySpace Website is prohibited. Commercial advertisements, affiliate links, and other forms of solicitation may be removed from Member profiles without notice and may result in termination of Membership privileges. Appropriate legal action will be taken for any illegal or unauthorized use of the MySpace Services.
Forbidden thing 11 is:
displaying an advertisement on your profile, or accepting payment or anything of value from a third person in exchange for your performing any commercial activity on or through the MySpace Services on behalf of that person, such as placing commercial content on your profile, posting blogs or bulletins with a commercial purpose, selecting a profile with a commercial purpose as one of your "Top 8" friends, or sending private messages with a commercial purpose;
As I said, I sincerely doubt most (any) Myspace members have read the Terms of Service, I can assure you that they are far more substantial than our own Terms of Service. Personally, I hope that the Board rectifies this.
Danny
As I said, I sincerely doubt most (any) Myspace members have read the Terms of Service, I can assure you that they are far more substantial than our own Terms of Service. Personally, I hope that the Board rectifies this.
Danny
I think this would be impossible. I signed up, like many, to certain ''terms of service'' and now all of a sudden they would get changed after 3+ years of actively participating. I feel that you would open up a Pandora's box if you did that. I am not a lawyer but I could see that my edits which I contributed under the previous term of service I would now actually have to give you permission again to keep them on the site or else I would be able to have them withdrawn, because I wouldn't agree to you using them under the new terms of service. Can you imagine the chaos from this?
Also you say you sincerely doubt that people read the terms of service ...... that is true most probably because they are to long and written in legalish. A language only known to a few people and not to poor Englishspeakers like myself. So what would be the use of new terms of service that no-one would read and if they read it they wouldn't understand it anyway. Leaving the board in a position to do what they want when they want it. I am sure many including myself didn't get involved on the projects just to start having a big brother being able to yank us of at will and still use our years of sweat we put into this. Speaking for myself if such a thing would happen I would pursue every legal way possible to get all of my edits removed from the projects.
Waerth
Walter van Kalken wrote:
As I said, I sincerely doubt most (any) Myspace members have read the Terms of Service, I can assure you that they are far more substantial than our own Terms of Service. Personally, I hope that the Board rectifies this.
Danny
I am not aware we really have any terms of service... At best, when we click on "save", we agree to put our content under gfdl.
Is there anything else ?
I think this would be impossible. I signed up, like many, to certain ''terms of service'' and now all of a sudden they would get changed after 3+ years of actively participating.
What and where did you sign ?
I feel that you would open up
a Pandora's box if you did that. I am not a lawyer but I could see that my edits which I contributed under the previous term of service I would now actually have to give you permission again to keep them on the site or else I would be able to have them withdrawn, because I wouldn't agree to you using them under the new terms of service. Can you imagine the chaos from this?
Frankly no. Afaik, the only thing we have now is you agreeing to put your content under GFDL. There is no reason that this should change.
Also you say you sincerely doubt that people read the terms of service ...... that is true most probably because they are to long and written in legalish. A language only known to a few people and not to poor Englishspeakers like myself.
Privacy policy is translated and imho, not difficult to understand. So, why could not we do it for terms of service ?
So what would be the use of new terms of
service that no-one would read and if they read it they wouldn't understand it anyway. Leaving the board in a position to do what they want when they want it. I am sure many including myself didn't get involved on the projects just to start having a big brother being able to yank us of at will and still use our years of sweat we put into this. Speaking for myself if such a thing would happen I would pursue every legal way possible to get all of my edits removed from the projects.
Why all that negativism and bad vibes toward the board ? Have you no faith and trust in us ?
Have you considered that "terms of use" does not only mean "the editorship must obey to rules defined by the host provider", but rather be a contractual document binding the Foundation and the editors together ? Not only a document where editors are requested to respect certain rules, but also a document where the Foundation engage itself to ALWAYS respect certain things.
Example, as an editor, I would like the Foundation to engage itself to ALWAYS provide dumps of project for free. This is not a requirement of the licence. Right now, the place where the Foundation promises to provide the content for free is the bylaws. But it does not clarify whether the content provided for free will be article per article (ie, on the website) or in a more gathered fashion (such as in global dumps or dumps per categories).
There are other things I would like to see the Foundation always respect in the future.
These things could indeed be clarified in the bylaws. But bylaws may be changed much more easily than terms, and mostly, bylaws only require board input to be changed. Whilst terms can not be changed without all parties agreeing.
Ant
Waerth
daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
As I said, I sincerely doubt most (any) Myspace members have read the Terms of Service, I can assure you that they are far more substantial than our own Terms of Service. Personally, I hope that the Board rectifies this.
My own €0.02 is that we should steer away from Byzantine and restrictive 'terms of service' for contributors as much as possible. Part of the point of Wikipedia is, as ever, that 'anyone can edit' and I'm wary of things that may discourage people from doing that.
I also wonder if more expansive terms of service would actually do anything to deal with the problem here (which I presume is that of commercial organisations using Wikipedia for what amounts to advertising). If, as you surmise, few users will read them, why bother creating them? Advertising is already covered by Wikipedia policy.
Cheers,
N.
On 10/1/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
As I said, I sincerely doubt most (any) Myspace members have read the Terms of Service, I can assure you that they are far more substantial than our own Terms of Service. Personally, I hope that the Board rectifies this.
Terms of Service are written by corporate lawyers who are afraid they might not be able to find their underwear sometime in the future. They're worthless for anything but the covering of asses.
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