From objet Sent Thu, Jul 1st 1999, 08:57
From objet Sent Thu, Jul 1st 1999, 08:57
> It takes a few users and Yahoo buckles like a > belt. They didn't buckle at all. Don't mistake a fat businessman loosening his belt for simple 'buckling'. All that Yahoo did was adjust the 'language' of the TOS to essentially 'apologize' for not having warned people of the recent change. The adjustment -- almost worst than no adjustment at all, since all it does is add an extra layer of patronizing rhetoric (how many times can people fall for this kind of shit?) -- is this: > Yahoo does not own Content you submit, unless we > specifically tell you otherwise before you submit it. But immediately thereafter, they do just that -- tell you otherwise. For the TOS agreement still reads: > 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. So -- the "buckling" difference introduced by such an adjustment in 'language' is this: all uploads to Yahoo/Geocities *from this day forth* will still remain the perpetual, irrevocable intellectual property of Yahoo. The only sites conceivably covered by Wednesday's TOS adjustment are ones that condemn themselves to *never being updated*. Yahoo's stock surged today. There's a reason for that. You can be sure that traders are betting, even if only remotely, on the chance that folx like us might be the new, totally clueless slave labor class producing the next generation of internet content (not form, mind you, but content. To quote an AFX track title, there's a Vaz Deferenz between the two. There: IDM content.) It's already happening, really: look at About.com, which exclusively relies on AoHell style 'volunteers' (i.e. suckers) to engineer content -- in exchange for the sole, psychologically self-aggrandizing reward of being 'noble guides across the new electronic frontier.' This is a hotly developing trend, one that could ultimately make all MP3 piracy issues look like squabbles over chump change. I just took down my Geocities pages, only one day after I uploaded an MP3 of a really neat 14 minute Lamb/Andrea Parker/lasttrackofMask300 mix. It'll all be up elsewhere soon enough, but that's not the point. I urge anyone else here with webspace at Geocities or Yahoo to do the same, and also urge you to visit these links: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/9264/ -- a page of grassroots protest, one that promotes the eating up of Yahoo/Geocities server space with similar protest sites. http://www.sitepowerup.com/boycottyahoo/boycottyahoo.htm -- th URL says it all. sr -- sd