6 ms·

Last time I looked at the Google Drive terms of service -- which was admittedly years ago (I ought to check again) -- they were basically unacceptable for me be

by cstross 12y ago

Last time I looked at the Google Drive terms of service -- which was admittedly years ago (I ought to check again) -- they were basically unacceptable for me because Google were demanding a perpetual non-exclusive copyright license to everything I stored there which would have allowed for unlimited reproduction or use for any purpose Google felt like making of it. It looked like your standard boilerplate land-grab, and unfortunately it was incompatible with my business (which involves selling exclusive (but time and scope limited) licenses to use copyrighted materials I produce.) Dropbox's copyright clause was much more tightly drawn and not incompatible with my business model.

Rumudiez 12y ago
This comment made me curious. When I went to check the actual terms of service, I found this line: "Some of our Services allow you to upload, submit, store, send or receive content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours." which is suddenly followed up by: "When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps)." So while you own your intellectual property, Google does take a copy of all rights pertinent to the work. It's hard for me to say why Google would do this; alienating what I'd imagine to be a significant userbase of content generators. Source: http://www.google.com/policies/terms/ http://www.google.com/policies/terms/
- diminoten 12y ago
  > Google does take a copy of all rights pertinent to the work. A limited copy, only for use in "operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones." In other words, you agree to let everything you upload to Google be used for testing. Anyone who's alienated by this shouldn't be putting content on non-owned servers in the first place. "The Cloud" isn't for your secret documents, it's for your family photos.
  - cstross 12y ago
    The show-stoppers are "... promoting and improving our Services, and to develop new ones". Suppose I use Google Drive to store my current project, a big-ass novel that's going to see simultaneous publication by major publishers in a number of markets around the world. Google could in principle give it away for free to new sign-ups for their service as a promotional goodie. Or "develop new ones" ... well, we already have Google Books: I am not sanguine about the prospect of a not-yet-published book of mine suddenly showing up in Google Books, or a next-generation incarnation of Google Books, without my say-so (or an agreement to pay royalties, because that's what I earn my living from). These uses are certainly unlikely but they're not impossible, and that big-ass slab of lawyer-speak in the middle of the ToS is a show-stopper for me. Which is a shame, because if they'd just bothered to specify that the rights are for the limited purpose of [yadda] internal development of new services -- i.e. as test data -- I'd be fine with that. Dropbox is a paid-for service that specifically supports business uses. It's ToS is acceptable. Google Drive is mostly used for free, and as the old saying puts it: if you aren't paying for the product, you are the product.
    - diminoten 12y ago
      > Google could in principle give it away for free to new sign-ups for their service as a promotional goodie. No they couldn't, because other parts of their ToS explicitly let you retain control over your copyright. You'd sue them, and win. Also, they'd lose all their customers and probably shut down the Google Drive program entirely. Maybe we should just try and find a lawyer to interpret this impartially (something you should do anyway if you're trying to pick a ToS that's "compatible" with your needs -- you really don't want to get burned by a tricky ToS, do you?), but as far as I understand the whole point of this passage is to allow Google to use your data to test their products, e.g. facial recognition, translation, etc., in an automated fashion. Exactly like Gmail, I am guessing the contents of individual user's drive accounts are probably scraped at regular intervals by machines for all sorts of purposes. This passage is a CYA for that activity. They're not looking for sneaky ways to get your book into their store. I'm not saying "use Google Drive over Dropbox!", because I don't give a hoot. But the Drive ToS isn't why you shouldn't use Google Drive.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- nagrom 12y ago
  "publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content" Well that's terrifying given that my phone uploads every picture I take to Google's services.
- funkyy 12y ago
  I think many people in comments to your post not understand that "can" is not equal to "will". The rights they require are mostly for avoiding issues with some countries, testing, avoiding responsibility during hack attacks, removing duplicates and editing some files that could be browser open. If anyone thinks that Google, multi billion company would take your photo and publish it to make money out of it - you are creating issues to yourself. Its Google, they are all about your data, statistics, behaviours and keywords. Not about stealing things and using your photos/artwork for marketing purposes. Cloud = trust. No matter if its Dropbox or Skydrive or Box. On the end of the day you either trust company or not. No matter what's in TOS.
deleted 12y ago
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by cstross 12y ago

Rumudiez 12y ago

This comment made me curious. When I went to check the actual terms of service, I found this line: "Some of our Services allow you to upload, submit, store, send or receive content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours." which is suddenly followed up by: "When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps)." So while you own your intellectual property, Google does take a copy of all rights pertinent to the work. It's hard for me to say why Google would do this; alienating what I'd imagine to be a significant userbase of content generators. Source: http://www.google.com/policies/terms/ http://www.google.com/policies/terms/

diminoten 12y ago
> Google does take a copy of all rights pertinent to the work. A limited copy, only for use in "operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones." In other words, you agree to let everything you upload to Google be used for testing. Anyone who's alienated by this shouldn't be putting content on non-owned servers in the first place. "The Cloud" isn't for your secret documents, it's for your family photos.
- cstross 12y ago
  The show-stoppers are "... promoting and improving our Services, and to develop new ones". Suppose I use Google Drive to store my current project, a big-ass novel that's going to see simultaneous publication by major publishers in a number of markets around the world. Google could in principle give it away for free to new sign-ups for their service as a promotional goodie. Or "develop new ones" ... well, we already have Google Books: I am not sanguine about the prospect of a not-yet-published book of mine suddenly showing up in Google Books, or a next-generation incarnation of Google Books, without my say-so (or an agreement to pay royalties, because that's what I earn my living from). These uses are certainly unlikely but they're not impossible, and that big-ass slab of lawyer-speak in the middle of the ToS is a show-stopper for me. Which is a shame, because if they'd just bothered to specify that the rights are for the limited purpose of [yadda] internal development of new services -- i.e. as test data -- I'd be fine with that. Dropbox is a paid-for service that specifically supports business uses. It's ToS is acceptable. Google Drive is mostly used for free, and as the old saying puts it: if you aren't paying for the product, you are the product.
  - diminoten 12y ago
    > Google could in principle give it away for free to new sign-ups for their service as a promotional goodie. No they couldn't, because other parts of their ToS explicitly let you retain control over your copyright. You'd sue them, and win. Also, they'd lose all their customers and probably shut down the Google Drive program entirely. Maybe we should just try and find a lawyer to interpret this impartially (something you should do anyway if you're trying to pick a ToS that's "compatible" with your needs -- you really don't want to get burned by a tricky ToS, do you?), but as far as I understand the whole point of this passage is to allow Google to use your data to test their products, e.g. facial recognition, translation, etc., in an automated fashion. Exactly like Gmail, I am guessing the contents of individual user's drive accounts are probably scraped at regular intervals by machines for all sorts of purposes. This passage is a CYA for that activity. They're not looking for sneaky ways to get your book into their store. I'm not saying "use Google Drive over Dropbox!", because I don't give a hoot. But the Drive ToS isn't why you shouldn't use Google Drive.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
nagrom 12y ago
"publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content" Well that's terrifying given that my phone uploads every picture I take to Google's services.
funkyy 12y ago
I think many people in comments to your post not understand that "can" is not equal to "will". The rights they require are mostly for avoiding issues with some countries, testing, avoiding responsibility during hack attacks, removing duplicates and editing some files that could be browser open. If anyone thinks that Google, multi billion company would take your photo and publish it to make money out of it - you are creating issues to yourself. Its Google, they are all about your data, statistics, behaviours and keywords. Not about stealing things and using your photos/artwork for marketing purposes. Cloud = trust. No matter if its Dropbox or Skydrive or Box. On the end of the day you either trust company or not. No matter what's in TOS.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]