What do you actually agree to when you click "I Agree"?

As I have mentioned before I take a course in 'Information retrieval and new new media' and in that course we have had a discussion about EULAs (End User License Agreements). More specifically we spoke about Facebook's EULA (or Terms of Use) since that one has some really interesting parts. A quick Google on "facebook eula" gives back some interesting results that pretty much lets me know that since I am registered at Facebook I have sold my soul to the Devil.

A few things stick out. First we have the fact that Facebook owns everything you put in your profile which includes but is not limited to photos, videos and drawings. This is of course very bad news especially if you happen to be an artist as Anna Goodson says in her article over at the Little Chimp Society. Facebook also has the right to sell your material to a third party. So what you are actually signing up for is to let Facebook taken any and all material you make available to Facebook by adding it to your profile, or any other part of Facebook, and have them make a profit on that material without giving you a dime for it. Personally I'm just glad that I don't produce all that much, especially nothing of any real value. Because I have to admit that I have definitely not read the Facebook EULA, like I would guess most people have not.

It would also seem that once you've added data to Facebook you can't get it back, something that Robert Scoble discovered in January this year. He tried out a beta version of Plaxo (a social networking tool) and ended up locked out of his Facebook account as he describes in a blog post. Grant Robertson writes about Scobel's problems over at the Downloadsquad and tells us that the reason for Facebook to not work towards integrating themselves with other social networks is because they can't compete that way. He also gives the creator of Facebook a bit of a kick up his bum and calls him a follower not an innovator. Maybe he is, I do not know him personally so I do not feel I can comment on his personality but fact is that Facebook is by no means the first social networking site of it's kind.

In comparison to Facebook's EULA it might be a good idea to look at an other social networking site and see if what I have written about above is a common phenomena. So lets look at Orkut (wikipedia link), a service run by Google, and it's EULA. To start off since it is a Google service the TOS for Orkut is the same TOS you agree to when you use Google's search engine, at least that is how I understand this part of the TOS.

2.2 You can accept the Terms by:

(B) by actually using the Services. In this case, you understand and agree that Google will treat your use of the Services as acceptance of the Terms from that point onwards.

Which when you think about it is of course necessary but my first reaction is of course "wow, I accept that document just by Googling?" as I would think is how many people would react that are not legally savvy. Anyway, continuing on. Google actually have a TOS highlight section which of course is very nice, especially if you are not a legally savvy, and if that wasn't enough Google is also pushing OpenSocial. For the purpose of this post I have read through the full TOS and also had a quick gander around the internet to see if I could find anybody, with a better legal nose than I, who have found anything questionable about the TOS. As I thought, before reading the TOS, I did not find anything odd with it (except for the above) and Google, surprisingly enough, did not give me any eye opening hits either. However making a search on Yahoo gave me an interesting hit, the EULA Hall of Shame (or EHOF as they call themselves in their EULA).

The people over at EHOF mostly reacts against the privacy parts of the Google EULA. One good point they make is the fact that how can a person agree to something that they do not know anything about, which is pretty much what it used to say in Google's privacy policy. However that seems to have changed and although it still says that the policy may change from time to time it now also says that they "...will not reduce your rights under this Policy without your explicit consent...". Which is kind of nice. Many of the other privacy issues that EHOF lists has also changed and maybe it is because of all the heat Google caught a while back from their stance towards China as it is written about in this New York Times article.

A different problem with the Google TOS is written about over at the OSVDB Blog. That has more to do with secrecy and security issues. It seems that some of Google's terms forces people to keep quite about security issues that might show up when you use Google's services. Personally I do not see this as a problem as it would surprise me if I discovered a security issue with Orkut. However it would of course be a problem if nothing was done about it by Google but that does not seem to be the case here.

Lastly I just want to add that while this blog article might give a lot of credit to Google I have to say that I do not think they are any different than any other company. Google wants to make money in what ever way they can. However considering how large of a company Google is they have a lot of responsibility and thus I do not in any way shape or form agree with how they have handled the China situation as an example.