Sometimes I think the answer to that question is Slashdot. Today’s case in point is a post by Timothy about Google’s terms and conditions for posting to Usenet via Google.
Slashdot summarizes the policy as, “Google Owns Your UseNet Post,” which is completely false. The actual terms of service say,
By posting communications on or through the Service, you automatically grant Google a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, edit, translate, distribute, perform, and display the communication alone or as part of other works in any form, media, or technology whether now known or hereafter developed, and to sublicense such rights through multiple tiers of sublicensees.
This is a very sensible policy; anything less would be asking for legal problems. Contrary to the Slashdot take on the TOS, Google doesn’t own your Usenet posts. Rather by posting you are granting them a “non-exclusive license to use, reproduce,” etc., etc. your post. Why would they want this?
For a number of reasons, but the main reason is that it will help forestall frivolous lawsuits as technology changes. For example, I ran an animal rights discussion group that had about 20,000 posts that were not part of a database. The current software I’m using for my web site uses a database and at some point I plan on bringing those old posts into the new system.
In that case you don’t want to have to deal with lawsuits from people saying “I never authorized you to include my post as part of a database compilation.” Sounds like hair splitting, but the Supreme Court has already ruled that there is a substantive difference between the two that is actionable.
Google also doesn’t want to get be left behind by technological change. Suppose that accessing the Internet by cell phone becomes all the rage, and people begin searching Google’s Usenet archive from their phones. Again, you want to protect yourself as much as possible from people suing on the grounds they intended their posts to be accessible from computer web browsers, but never gave permission for those posts to be accessed from a cell phone.
Finally, I can’t help but point out the sheer hypocrisy of Slashdot doing hand wringing over who owns posts after that web site’s own debacle when it decided to take posts from its web site and reprint them in a book without even trying to obtain permission to do so.