Enough Already! Let’s Come to Terms.
We all do it - sign up on-line for something or other and automatically accept their “Terms of Service”. Then you click the checkbox or button to accept without a second thought. You may want to re-think that.
Terms of Service (ToS) agreements have become quite complicated in the past few years. The early ToS agreements averaged 1 to 2 pages. Today, for example, the Facebook ToS agreement runs almost 50 pages. A fully caffeinated lawyer would have trouble getting through it! What chance do you have of understanding what you’re agreeing to?
Did you know that Facebook “owns” anything you post there? According to Facebook, “you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook.” LinkedIn goes a step further and claims to your content “in any way now known or in the future discovered”. And these aren’t unique. And if you think there’s no way these would be upheld in court, think again. The courts have ruled over and over again that these agreements ARE enforceable.
So don’t post your next novel online or to a blog to get comments from friends. You could find your “best seller” novel on the shelves published by someone else and there’s nothing you could do about it!
