8.4 Google acknowledges and agrees that it obtains no right, title or interest from you (or your licensors) under these Terms in or to any Content that you submit, post, transmit or display on, or through, the Services, including any intellectual property rights which subsist in that Content (whether those rights happen to be registered or not, and wherever in the world those rights may exist). Unless you have agreed otherwise in writing with Google, you agree that you are responsible for protecting and enforcing those rights and that Google has no obligation to do so on your behalf.

10.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.

EULA: What–Me Worry?”
http://faseidl.com/public/blog/187697

Given the amount of traffic and linkage this post seems to be getting, I think it behooves you to either update it or post a followup.

Back when I was taking business law classes a prof told us “if a man insists on having the right to scr*w you written into a contract, ignore anything he says. He means to scr*w you at the earliest profitable opportunity.”

There’s a google guy up above says it was a mistake, and while I’m perfectly willing to take his word for that, I will also refrain from looking at the browser until it’s fixed, just as a way of looking out for my own interests.

If you’re a writer or a blogger or a “content creator” in today’s world, you’re a mouse running loose in Jurassic Park. Paranoia isn’t “drama” – it’s survival.

So far he’s never been wrong in the last 30 years.

did you know one of google’s founders is russian btw?

Boiler plate stuff from a web service got into their EULA… and you are freaking out? Did you even READ the clause?

This is really a case of seeing what you want to see, and you are chosing to freak out over something that isn’t even a problem… christ.

I work for Google, and though I’m not affiliated with the Chrome team I was just as worried about this when I heard about it as you were, so I looked into it a bit. Put simply, Nat’s right: we goofed, and we’re fixing it. Here’s an official statement from Rebecca Ward, who’s the Senior Product Counsel for Chrome:

In order to keep things simple for our users, we try to use the same set of legal terms (our Universal Terms of Service) for many of our products. Sometimes, as in the case of Google Chrome, this means that the legal terms for a specific product may include terms that don’t apply well to the use of that product. We are working quickly to remove language from Section 11 of the current Google Chrome terms of service. This change will apply retroactively to all users who have downloaded Google Chrome.

I know that’s a bit vague on the details, and although obviously I’d love it if you’d take me at my word that we really truly aren’t trying to steal your content and that we are not going to leave in a section allowing us to do so, I don’t know exactly what language will be removed or when the new EULA will be up. As you’re probably aware, any change to the mystical lawyerese has to be checked and rechecked and approved by umpteen different people before it goes live (there might be chanting and holy water involved in there somewhere), and that’s likely why the specific nature of the changes aren’t stated in the statement I just quoted. Since I’m not part of Google’s legal team (I’m just a software engineer), they probably wouldn’t welcome my making promises on behalf of the company, but suffice it to say that a lot of us do things on the Internet too when we’re not at work, and we don’t like the idea of granting anyone else a perpetual license to those things any more than you do.

Thanks to everyone who’s brought this to light — whether or not you think we’re evil, we don’t want to live in a world where people have to take a company’s word for it that they won’t steal their work. Speaking up is the right thing to do, and I hope our response to this will help encourage more of the same.

Regards,
Brian Ellis

I am never using Chrome.

I’m guessing, as other commenters have said above, that this is simply a mistake on Google’s part, and that it will be removed in an upcoming release, since it’s hard to fathom why they would leave such an odd loophole.

From a business perspective, it makes perfect sense: this covers the Internet as a store-and-forward network, something that must be taken into account if you’re going to get any kind of legal coverage. I don’t know of better wording out there, but it’s not something I spend a lot of time on.

I think the out–and I Am Not A Lawyer–is this phrase: “This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services”. If you can argue that the use of content was for some other purpose than the distribution or promotion of the Google service, you might have a leg to stand on. Of course, we don’t know what Google will do with it, but I suspect anything complete enough to be worth stealing will also be about something else than the Google service.

You can’t get something for nothing nowadays my friend.

When you post or use ANY of Goog’s online services you’re granting them that license. But if you look at the final line of the clause, the license is for the sole purpose of enabling the Goog to display, distribute and promote the Services.

Really – I think Goog’s bottom line is doing well enough that they won’t resort to reprinting your sultry emailed affairs, or nabbing that first draft you typed up in Docs to turn a buck.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/legal/eula/firefox-en.html

Even Safari limits its license to “technical and related information” (see Section 3) that it collects. Plus, it is clearer than Google about what it is collecting this information for:

http://blog.wiredpig.us/2007/07/23/apple-safari-eula/

These are law (I think) for UGC sites/systems where hosting of UGC content is used.

Also, the clause usually only permits use of content for promotional purposes of the ‘Services’ only (though the ‘Additional Terms’ are noted).

Link: Google Chrome is Bad for Writers …

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