Nothing else belongs to you

Translator's Preface

After the launch of Google Drive, another wave of dissatisfaction with the terms of use of Google services rolled through the Internet. In fact, the TOS problem is inherent in almost the entire modern Internet. The article seemed to me interesting, though not indisputable and not too deep, but it describes the situation in an accessible way.

Nothing else belongs to you

Do not worry about the terms of use of Google Drive, look at the terms of use of all services. On the Internet we are with you - the goods on sale.

Have you thoughtfully read the terms of use (TOS) on sites like Google or Facebook? Or I will ask in another way: have you read the terms of use on a sufficient number of sites? If yes, you will easily recognize an example: after a more or less lengthy introduction that resembles a throat cleansing, most of the conditions go to the sad point:
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For most people, this item is the most significant. This is exactly the place where every company you communicate with online — Facebook, Pinterest, Microsoft, or, as in the above case, Google — explains to you, straightforwardly to your simple face, that by downloading your content, you give it away . And although this passage is written most clearly, you do not leave the feeling that you have become a victim of fraud. It is he who “gets” you on the Internet.

The statement that the user continues to “own” the content, but gives the websites an almost unlimited license to use it, has become so ubiquitous that it has practically turned into a template, a new standard in the ownership of content. And this is terribly abnormal! Facebook or even Google Drive becomes your licensee every time you upload a photo, and you become a licensor to a certain extent. Publishing photos from your birthday means entering into a complex legal relationship, as if when renting a house or entering into an employment contract. Of course, the rates are not so high, you do not put your signature and the transaction itself takes only a fraction of a second, but the difference is limited to this.

These oppressive, confusing, for the most part invisible relationships determine the Internet we are familiar with today.

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Google’s terms of use not only look “in demand”, they really are: TOS Google Drive (and generally all Google services) gives the company the right to do almost everything with the content you have uploaded. And not because Google has a lot of cool ideas on publicly displaying your photos, but because the copyright law was written before such a thing as a computer appeared.

“The copyright law is really strange,” says Greg Lastovka, one of the directors of the Rutger Institute for Information Policy and Law. “These companies only do what makes them do the law.”

For example, you painted a picture. In the literal sense of the word, you own paper and ink for drawing, and you copyright on something non-material: structure, shape, design. If someone steals your drawing, he steals your property. If someone photographs your drawing, then it violates the copyright. “When you say you own a photo,” says Lastovka, “you really mean:“ I have an exclusive right to reproduce my photo. ””

Copyright is easy to follow in a world where photo transfer is only possible by publication or physical copying, so the law worked well. When “transferring” a photo to your grandmother, you put either the photo itself or a copy of it in an envelope and send it by mail.

However, sending grandma a photo by e -mail can include copying your photo 5 or 6 times, first to Google’s servers, then to another server, then to the provider’s CDN, then to the AOL server and the grandmother’s computer. For you, this is similar to dropping an envelope in a mailbox, but in terms of copyright, this is a coordinated legal dance.

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Sites must obtain permission (license) to copy and distribute your materials. They need your consent to “use” and “hosting”, “storage” and “copying” only to provide you with the promised functionality. Of course, they do not necessarily need the right to “change”, “create derivative works” and “publicly demonstrate” ... as long as they do not need to earn money. And they, of course, need.

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It is clear why Facebook needs to license your content. It is less clear why Google needs such a broad license for Google Drive, because Google Drive intends to be a personal repository, and not a publicly accessible page. But it is not important. In terms of copyright law, they are more likely to be similar than different.

Terms of use, giving online companies enough leeway to operate, legally allow them a lot of things. which they guess not to do yet. Pinterest, suddenly selling printouts of the panels of its users, would be a terrible public relations and stupid business plan. But even selling, they would come out dry. The Facebook Beacon was dreadful and stupid (a disguised way of saying “5 years earlier than needed”), but apparently not illegal.

In order not to risk and not narrow the conditions of use, companies began to write them more skillful, even encouraging. When Facebook bought Instagram, I was worried about replacing its generous TOS, where the first sentence in the “Rights” section reads like a megaphone shouted out:

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But even replacing Facebook with your own conditions would be completely unimportant. The first sentence is nothing more than seduction. Instagram does not claim rights because it does not need it, and most importantly because it will be ridiculous! It’s just the same as the company would have written at the beginning of TOS “Instagram doesn’t show any rights to parties in your house and eating your food”. It's so obvious!

“When [companies] say that you“ own ”something,” says Lastovka, “they say that you own it, but give us an unlimited license.” The same TOS Instagram offer (the one about licenses) actually identical to Facebook and sufficient for a rational person to feel as if he is giving up his property at every login.

And here is the alienation. Do we really own something, if another person or company can do whatever they want with it? Do you have a real sense of ownership of something, if a multi-billion dollar company makes money on it and does not pay you a penny?

My brain says no. And my still active Facebook account says “yes.”