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Who owns the cloud? Not you.
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Nar Gilah
May 4, 2012, 9:23:06 AM5/4/12
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Friday, May 4, 2012 12:15 PM UTC
[54]Who owns the cloud?
Google claims users retain intellectual property rights, but the terms of
service tell a more complex story
By [55]David Sirota
When you hear the phrase “property rights,” you probably think of
farmers fighting environmental regulators and homeowners arguing with
oil drillers. But in the Information Age, you should also be thinking
about your computer – and asking, how much of you is really yours? It’s
not a navel-gazing rumination from a college Intro to Existentialism
class – it’s an increasingly pressing question in the brave new world
of social networking and cloud computing.
Last week’s big technology announcement spotlighted the thorny issue.
As the Los Angeles Times reported, Google’s announcement of its “Google
Drive” came with the promise that users will “retain ownership of any
intellectual property rights that you hold in that content.” But when
you save files to Google’s new hard-drive folder in the cloud, the
terms of service you are required to agree to gives Google “a worldwide
license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative
works, communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and
distribute (your) content” as the company sees fit.
When asked about this, Google argued that its provisions merely “enable
us to give you the services you want – so if you decide to share a
document with someone, or open it on a different device, you can.”
As reassuring as that seems, though, it’s not that simple when
considered in a larger context.
In the last few years, major technology companies have become integral
to interpersonal communication and information management. At the same
time, many of these firms have tweaked user agreements in exactly the
way Google has, helping the industry legally position itself for a mass
intellectual property grab. That means whether you are using a
photo-sharing site or a Web-based email account, you may have signed
off on letting one of these corporations do whatever it wants with your
data. As evidence of that reality, Facebook in 2009 let advertisers
employ users’ uploaded photos to market products without users’
explicit approval.
Such a use unto itself may not offend you, but remember – that’s only
what you can see. Indeed, nobody has any comprehensive idea of how tech
companies are using these provisions in their secret
business-to-business dealings. If they are already using your photos,
what else are they doing behind their firewall? Are they selling your
data? Are they mining your cloud files looking to preemptively
appropriate the next great innovations? Nobody knows … well, except the
tech companies themselves.
It’s easy to ignore such concerns by believing that the scope of a mass
data mining operation is prohibitively large. But that’s not true. With
the government already mining data from millions of Americans’ phone
records in the name of fighting terrorism, it’s perfectly reasonable to
believe that multibillion-dollar corporations can do the same.
Of course, companies providing these services assert that intellectual
property is a substitute currency for cash. As the logic goes, even
though online services cost money to create and maintain, you the user
don’t have to pay actual cash for them because you are already paying
in information about yourself, which technology companies then
monetize.
That may seem at first like a good deal. But amid companies’
ever-intensifying pursuit of profit, the monetization process opens up
the possibility for serious shenanigans. And here’s the worst part: If
a company ultimately pilfers inventions or trade secrets or anything
else from users, it will already be too late. Because we so quickly hit
“agree” when we originally opened our accounts, we will have signed
away any claim to what we believed to be ours and ours alone.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
[58]David Sirota
David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book "Back to Our
Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now." He hosts the
morning show on AM760 in Colorado. E-mail him at d...@davidsirota.com,
follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at
www.davidsirota.com.
References
54. http://www.salon.com/2012/05/04/who_owns_the_cloud/singleton/
55. http://www.salon.com/writer/david_sirota/
58. http://www.salon.com/writer/david_sirota/
[54]Who owns the cloud?
Google claims users retain intellectual property rights, but the terms of
service tell a more complex story
By [55]David Sirota
When you hear the phrase “property rights,” you probably think of
farmers fighting environmental regulators and homeowners arguing with
oil drillers. But in the Information Age, you should also be thinking
about your computer – and asking, how much of you is really yours? It’s
not a navel-gazing rumination from a college Intro to Existentialism
class – it’s an increasingly pressing question in the brave new world
of social networking and cloud computing.
Last week’s big technology announcement spotlighted the thorny issue.
As the Los Angeles Times reported, Google’s announcement of its “Google
Drive” came with the promise that users will “retain ownership of any
intellectual property rights that you hold in that content.” But when
you save files to Google’s new hard-drive folder in the cloud, the
terms of service you are required to agree to gives Google “a worldwide
license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative
works, communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and
distribute (your) content” as the company sees fit.
When asked about this, Google argued that its provisions merely “enable
us to give you the services you want – so if you decide to share a
document with someone, or open it on a different device, you can.”
As reassuring as that seems, though, it’s not that simple when
considered in a larger context.
In the last few years, major technology companies have become integral
to interpersonal communication and information management. At the same
time, many of these firms have tweaked user agreements in exactly the
way Google has, helping the industry legally position itself for a mass
intellectual property grab. That means whether you are using a
photo-sharing site or a Web-based email account, you may have signed
off on letting one of these corporations do whatever it wants with your
data. As evidence of that reality, Facebook in 2009 let advertisers
employ users’ uploaded photos to market products without users’
explicit approval.
Such a use unto itself may not offend you, but remember – that’s only
what you can see. Indeed, nobody has any comprehensive idea of how tech
companies are using these provisions in their secret
business-to-business dealings. If they are already using your photos,
what else are they doing behind their firewall? Are they selling your
data? Are they mining your cloud files looking to preemptively
appropriate the next great innovations? Nobody knows … well, except the
tech companies themselves.
It’s easy to ignore such concerns by believing that the scope of a mass
data mining operation is prohibitively large. But that’s not true. With
the government already mining data from millions of Americans’ phone
records in the name of fighting terrorism, it’s perfectly reasonable to
believe that multibillion-dollar corporations can do the same.
Of course, companies providing these services assert that intellectual
property is a substitute currency for cash. As the logic goes, even
though online services cost money to create and maintain, you the user
don’t have to pay actual cash for them because you are already paying
in information about yourself, which technology companies then
monetize.
That may seem at first like a good deal. But amid companies’
ever-intensifying pursuit of profit, the monetization process opens up
the possibility for serious shenanigans. And here’s the worst part: If
a company ultimately pilfers inventions or trade secrets or anything
else from users, it will already be too late. Because we so quickly hit
“agree” when we originally opened our accounts, we will have signed
away any claim to what we believed to be ours and ours alone.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
[58]David Sirota
David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book "Back to Our
Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now." He hosts the
morning show on AM760 in Colorado. E-mail him at d...@davidsirota.com,
follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at
www.davidsirota.com.
References
54. http://www.salon.com/2012/05/04/who_owns_the_cloud/singleton/
55. http://www.salon.com/writer/david_sirota/
58. http://www.salon.com/writer/david_sirota/
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