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Because there are not enough people analysing ToS documents online, I thought I'd give it a go. Hope I don't bore you too much!
Today's happy fun legal text is the PhotoBox Terms of Use. Is PhotoBox our knight in shining armour, ready to drop everything to defend our rights? Or is it an evil wyrm after our photographic copyright for its own commercial gain? Let's find out.
Our first and most important concern where it comes to photographs is assuaged quite clearly:
Another common concern is quite clearly met as well: if you decide to cancel your account, they will remove your photos from their website.
However, not all is sunny and shiny. Unfortunately PhotoBox is another example of a site with a clause that allows them to change their terms of use at any time without any warning. This is bad, and completely undoes all of the good that the rest of the terms do for us. Unfortunately it also seems to be all too common in website ToSes.
On the privacy front, you are required to specifically opt out of mailings in order to prevent your personal details being shared with third parties, but apart from that your privacy seems to be relatively well-protected.
One thing that is emphasised quite strongly is that PhotoBox only stores our photos at their discretion; we can't in any way rely on PhotoBox to be our primary photo storage. They can delete your photos for whaveter reason they want. They can go down for maintainance at any time, for any length of time. And if your photos are lost in the aether or corrupted, they're not keeping any backups. This is really just what you'd expect from a free service, but it's worth bearing in mind.
Part of the reason they might delete your photos or indeed your account is for breaching their code of conduct, which is a lot more restrictive than you would expect for, say, certain blogging sites. PhotoBox is not going to stick up to your right of free speech; so long as you understand that, you're good. So no erotica, nothing that might 'annoy', 'embarass' or 'alarm' anybody. Nothing that intrudes on anybody's privacy. Yes, this is vague. Remember, they can delete anything for any reason.
But my favourite part of the code of conduct is about a third of the way in; just past the 'descrimination based on...' and 'incitement of hatred' bits that you'd expect it simply says 'blasphemous material'.
Is it just me that mentally hears the voice of the Emperor Dalek here? "THIS... IS... BLASPHEMY!" 8^)
So, have a handy summary box:
Today's happy fun legal text is the PhotoBox Terms of Use. Is PhotoBox our knight in shining armour, ready to drop everything to defend our rights? Or is it an evil wyrm after our photographic copyright for its own commercial gain? Let's find out.
Our first and most important concern where it comes to photographs is assuaged quite clearly:
You retain all intellectual property rights, including copyright, in those images that you have uploaded to our websites or emailed to us where you already own such rights.
Another common concern is quite clearly met as well: if you decide to cancel your account, they will remove your photos from their website.
However, not all is sunny and shiny. Unfortunately PhotoBox is another example of a site with a clause that allows them to change their terms of use at any time without any warning. This is bad, and completely undoes all of the good that the rest of the terms do for us. Unfortunately it also seems to be all too common in website ToSes.
On the privacy front, you are required to specifically opt out of mailings in order to prevent your personal details being shared with third parties, but apart from that your privacy seems to be relatively well-protected.
One thing that is emphasised quite strongly is that PhotoBox only stores our photos at their discretion; we can't in any way rely on PhotoBox to be our primary photo storage. They can delete your photos for whaveter reason they want. They can go down for maintainance at any time, for any length of time. And if your photos are lost in the aether or corrupted, they're not keeping any backups. This is really just what you'd expect from a free service, but it's worth bearing in mind.
Part of the reason they might delete your photos or indeed your account is for breaching their code of conduct, which is a lot more restrictive than you would expect for, say, certain blogging sites. PhotoBox is not going to stick up to your right of free speech; so long as you understand that, you're good. So no erotica, nothing that might 'annoy', 'embarass' or 'alarm' anybody. Nothing that intrudes on anybody's privacy. Yes, this is vague. Remember, they can delete anything for any reason.
But my favourite part of the code of conduct is about a third of the way in; just past the 'descrimination based on...' and 'incitement of hatred' bits that you'd expect it simply says 'blasphemous material'.
Is it just me that mentally hears the voice of the Emperor Dalek here? "THIS... IS... BLASPHEMY!" 8^)
So, have a handy summary box:
| C Reasonable | Mostly solid, with a well-thought out and reasonable stance on user rights. Would be a 'B', but I refuse to give higher than a C for any site that allows itself to change its terms at any time. |
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