Administrative Law

I often wonder about libraries that use flickr, youtube etc. Good in so many ways, but who in the library is actually signing the contracts with these companies and negotiating the the terms?  In the old days, a new vendor contract would go through purchasing and someone with at least some familiarity with terms like "venue" and "choice of law" would ensure that the license complied with local requirements.  But now, with so many services offered for free, and the signature line turned into a mere click (with the actual terms tucked away on another page), I suspect there are a number of libraries that need to take another look and see if there are terms that can and should be negotiated.

The federal government has negotiated some terms. The Library of Congress negotiated its license with Flickr, and the Government Services Administration (GSA) has negotiated on behalf of federal government agencies for various 2.0 services. 

Now you can see some of those contracts. The Electronic Privacy Information Center is sharing nine contracts between the federal government and web 2.0 services that it obtained using Freedom of Information requests. GSA was able to get explicit obligations to comply with privacy or freedom of informmation laws with MySpace, SlideShare.net, Flickr, Vimeo.com, AddThis.com, Blip.tv, and BLIST.

The contracts with Facebook, Slideshare.net, Vimeo.com, and AddThis.com do not address the privacy obligations of social media companies.

EPIC notes that the GSA Agreement with Google actually states that, ?to the extent any rules or guidelines exist prohibiting the use of persistent cookies in connection with Provider Content applies to Google, Provider expressly waives those rules or guidelines as they may apply to Google.? Some of the agreements also permit companies to track users of government web sites for advertising purposes.