Intellectual Property Law

Terms Of Service, x2 (#tos)

By Denise Howell

All YOUR data are belong to U.S.
Originally uploaded by Imamon

Courtesy of Professor Lessig and Boing Boing, here's a great resource from Markus Weiland: his comparison of the rights to user data/submissions required by various video hosting sites.  Definitely something to peruse when deciding on a place to put your videos.  Also see Scott Bourne's commentary and interview with me and Brett Trout:  What Does TOS Mean Anyway?

More interesting discussion of terms of service in the modern era is bound to take place at the upcoming E-Commerce Best Practices conference at Stanford Law School on June 12.  This is a deeply wonky annual event I enjoy attending when possible, but this year preschool graduation takes precedence. So, I won't be at Stanford, but I'd love to hear about it during and after the fact if you will be.  Notable sessions include:

 

Best Practices for Drafting Terms of Use (including Drafting more user-friendly agreements, Class action waivers, arbitration clauses, choice of law and forum, Dealing with overlap in B2B arrangements, and Adapting Terms of Use to open source environments)

and

User-generated Content (including Copyright liability and the UGC principles, Secondary trademark infringement, Making sense of CDA case law, and International perspectives)

It's good to see "user friendliness" front and center for the Terms of Use session, though it begs the question whether the reference is to comprehensibility, or scope, or both.  This tends to be a very industry-oriented confab.

Full post as published by Bag and Baggage on May 13, 2009 (boomark / email).