Reply to post: Re: @ diodesign Nonplussed

Google spins up 'FREE, unlimited' cloud photo storage 4 years before ad giant nixes it

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Re: @ diodesign Nonplussed

Who owns the photos you upload? Do they suddenly become stock photos for Google to use?

As far as I can tell, you just asked the Really Ugly Question that Google wants you to overlook. First a verbatim quote from their T&Cs, and then what I think that means in normal English.

"When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps)."

In English:

- Google graciously give themselves rights to your uploads in perpetuity (I know they have carefully avoided that word, but let's get real), even if you signal you no longer want those images online by deleting them. Tough luck, and even tougher if they were of the party variety - welcome to the whack-a-mole game we already know from email addresses.

- Google give themselves the right to use all your content for their own marketing efforts, so thank you very much that you spent a fortune travelling to the Amazon (no, not the shop) and risked you life chopping a path through the jungle, they will use your picture for free. You'll get nada. Tip for you: add a visible copyright notice to all your images, as removal or tampering with that is a criminal offence in the US, thus rendering it unusable (because cropping it off is also tampering). Oh, and they are allowed to change them too, so composing an image of you meeting some criminal is all perfectly legal. It may be a problem for you if that image wanders into some court case, but hey, you agreed to this. Better not say anything Google doesn't like...

I am not entirely sure this is legally acceptable, though, because I can see arguments to flag this as unfair contract terms under UK law. But now you know why I don't have a Facebook or a Google account - I actually read these things and both of them have put terms in there that no right minded person would accept if they had bothered to read them and understand the implications.

These companies are dangerous in many, many ways.

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