AG's Tech Test Blog

[UPDATE NOTE: read clear through, please] Privacy mavens are aghast at a new* clause in AOL Instant Messenger's Terms of Service agreement, which says that

"...by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL, its parent,
affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable,
perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute,
adapt and promote this Content in any medium. You waive any right to
privacy."

Translation: Whatever you say in IM, we reserve the right to keep a copy and use it as we see fit. (A cynical observer might wonder if the brain trust at AOL HQ has it in mind to somehow reuse all those billions and billions of IMs -- to make them searchable, perhaps.) Possible winners in this mess: Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger, the number 2 and 3 IM services respectively. Probable losers: AIM's 31-million-plus subscriber base.

* Update: Slashdot, that most excellent hivemind, is saying that it's not so new as that -- a year old. And that it may or may not apply to IMs as opposed to chats. But as with so many of these ToS agreements, it's rather hard to tell -- and, again, how many chat or IM users mean for their words to becoem endlessly replicable by what amounts to, as AOL is one of the first to argue when it suits their purposes, the phone company?!

** Update 2: They made the change -- a wise choice, we suspect.