I thought I would pass this along to all of you if by chance you have any of
the following on geocities/yahoo
In a message dated 7/1/99 3:28:44 AM, skinner@skinner.org writes:
<<someone sent me the following info,
ultra bad news regarding copyrights and content on
geocities. bassically anything up there, like mp3s for
example, become copyrighted property of geocities/yahoo.
take down your mp3s on geocities asap!!!
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 13:20:50 -0700 Subject: Have you seen
this? Status: U
I went to yahoo and confirm this, it's hard to swallow. It
specificaly deals with Yahoo/Geocities's new contract. Take
a look at Yahoo's "terms
and services" link.
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ One
more thing to worry about if you haved anykind of
intellectual property on yahoo, and rest assured the rest of
them will follow suit.
Begins Here:
8. CONTENT SUBMITTED TO YAHOO
By submitting Content to
any Yahoo property, you automatically grant, or
warrant that the owner of such Content has expressly
granted, Yahoo the
royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable,
non-exclusive and fully sublicensable right and license to
use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create
derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such
Content (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate
it in other works in any form, media, or technology now
known or later developed. You acknowledge
that Yahoo does not pre-screen Content, but that Yahoo and
its designees
shall have the right (but not the obligation) in their sole
discretion to refuse, edit, move or remove any Content that
is publicly available via the Service. Without limiting the
foregoing, Yahoo and its designees shall have the right to
remove any Content that violates the TOS or is otherwise
objectionable. You agree that you must evaluate, and bear
all risks associated with, the use of any Content, including
any reliance on the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of
such Content. In this regard, you acknowledge that you may
not rely on any Content created by Yahoo or
submitted to Yahoo, including without limitation information
in Yahoo!
Message Boards, Yahoo! Clubs, and in all other
parts of the Service.
(This is a direct quote from the Terms of Service page which
you can find at: Yahoo! Terms of Service)
In short, any content you have on GeoCities or any other of
Yahoo's
properties is theirs to use, ROYALTY-FREE,
forever. Any images that you've
made, any of your own
copyrighted material you've made available, any
pictures
you've published, etc. belongs to them and they can do
whatever
they want with it, forever, in any medium "or technology now
known or later developed."
I bet you weren't aware that any work you've produced and
shown to others via your GeoCities site now "belongs" to you
AND Yahoo. Further, if you read closely you see that they
also gave themselves the "fully sublicensable right and
license to use" so they can take your property, sell it to
others(giving you nothing), or even license it to your
competitor AND NOT PAY YOU A DIME!
What's worse, you can't even take your content off of
GeoCities WITHOUT AGREEING TO THESE TERMS! If you're there
already, they've got your material now, lock, stock and
barrel! It is time to show these corporate clowns that there
is a large, diverse
internet outside of their "properties" and they can shove
their various services into whichever oriface they may fit,
now or in the future! Stop using Yahoo. Boycott them, and
all of their properties. This includes Yahoo.com,
GeoCities.com and Broadcast.com. Don't buy products from
merchants at shopping.Yahoo.com and let them know why!
Let Yahoo know that you won't tolerate this! Email
copyright@yahoo-inc.com and demand that they let you remove
your content AND demand that they remove it from their
databases AND demand that they won't use it without
your express consent.
Move your site to one of GeoCities' competitors (see list at
left).
Link to this page from your site (your new site, if you're
moving from
GeoCities) and let your visitors know that
this issue is important to you as a webmaster, even if you
don't use GeoCities yourself!
If you're a user and you use a site which is located at
GeoCities, let the
owner of that site know that he or
she has just signed over his or her entire work to these
goons and they should leave the service at once!
If you are a graphics professional, design logos which don't
infringe on
Yahoo's copyrights but will give viewers the message that
they are under
boycott (think of the ribbon campaign to defeat the CDA last
year).>
If you are a reporter, or know one, or know how to get in
touch with one, grab their ear and let them know this is
going on.>>