I was looking at a new beta search engine called Browsr that had some potentially interesting features for creating your own private and sharable directories of links. You have to create an account to see what those features would do, so I started filling in the info and then dutifully read the Terms of Service.

I have friends that laugh at me for doing that but I don’t sign up for anything online until I’ve read the ToS, and many sites I’ve ended up declining joining because of the evilness that I find embedded in that document. I’ve even been known to go so far as emailing the site support asking for clarification of points in the terms if I’m still interested in joining the service. About half the time I actually get satisfactory responses, and I also have written documentation to fall back on just in case.

But back to Browsr. There are some evil conditions listed in their ToS unfortunately, so I will not be joining their membership. Browsr is a link aggregator, a collaborative filter, a bookmarking service… it points to things, but it has this in it’s terms:

Additionally, by placing your information, files, bookmarks, blogs and photos on BROWSR you hereby grant us, our affiliates, and our partners a worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free, nonexclusive, license to use, reproduce, create derivative works of, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, transfer, transmit, distribute your information, files, blogs, files and photos.

(my emphasis on bookmarks…)

I don’t think so.

I’m not giving up the rights to my content just by posting a link (even a private link) on someone’s site. And does that mean that if you post a link to someone else’s content they are also subject to these terms and can have their content taken and manipulated without having ever even seen Browsr, much less agreed to its terms? Something is very wrong with this.

And geeze, they even do-what-they-will with your “information”. The implications of that are potentially very scary: they could choose to publish your name, email address or other registration information publicly under these terms, or at the least share them with their “partners and affiliates” who may have their own evil agenda.

Maybe I’m missing something, but I can’t imagine why I would ever want to sign up for a site that wants to take all my content because I linked to it without giving me any compensation other than the privilege of using their site. To be honest, I don’t mind if my content is shared with the world. In fact, I want it to be or I wouldn’t be blogging. But if there is any money to be made off of it now or in the future I want that money to come to me or services that I carefully choose to split the proceeds with (under my ToS).

On a related theme, TAD has been complaining about some of the same things with Newsvine, a service that he recently got an invite for and started checking out. I still don’t really like the restrictions they impose, but at least Newsvine actually does have a monetary compensation plan if you post content on their site. They give you a cut of the revenues they make from people viewing your posts.

So why are there so many other sites that do have the type of awful terms like Browsr does (Browsr certainly isn’t the first site I’ve seen with them)? Why do people join these services under those conditions? How do people allow themselves to check that “I agree” box? Do they just not read the ToS or don’t understand the implications or is it that they are just willing to trade potential monetary compensation for egopoints?

My advice is to seriously scrutinize the ToS and Privacy Policy of any site you’d potentially join if you’re not already. RTFToS! You may be suprised at what you’re signing away!