Yahoo!, the internet portal, has been attacked by an online watchdog over new terms for the 4.5 million users of its GeoCities home pages. A new clause in the Terms of Service document demands that "homesteaders" who host their home pages at the site give Yahoo! extensive rights to re-use, republish and sublicense their material. Users will not be given access to their websites until they agree to the new terms.
The clause was branded "outrageous" by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit civil liberties group which specialises in computer and internet issues. The document was sent to GeoCities users last weekend. It says that, by posting pages on the free web-hosting site, users "automatically grant" Yahoo! a series of "royalty-free, perpetual, irrecoverable, non-exclusive and fully sublicensable" rights to use the material "in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed".
Concerns were expressed online as soon as the new Terms of Service were posted. One expert warned that "GeoCities/Yahoo owns your work if you store it on their server". Other users said they feared the new clause gave Yahoo! the right to sell at a profit content they produced. Shari Steele, director of legal services for the EFF, said the new clause was "really pretty outrageous" but legal, and based on previous court rulings on software "shrinkwrap" licences, where users are deemed to agree to terms and conditions by ripping open a software package. At least two other major online communities use similar clauses.
She added: "the problem is that there's not enough notice for people to be giving away that many rights. These are pretty strong rights you're going to give away and I think it could be challenged in a way shrinkwrap licences could not - meaning successfully." Yahoo! executive producer Tim Brady said that although the Terms of Service were new for GeoCities users, they had been in use at Yahoo! for "quite a period".
He denied the new clause was meant to "grab other people's work or somehow capitalise on the time they have spent building these home pages". He told Guardian OnLine: "We have no ownership over the content. All we get is licence to put up [web pages] and copy, the reason being that we have server mirrors throughout the world. In case a server goes down we copy to a different server. And we need the right to do that."
Responding to suggestions that the language was very broad for such a need, he said: "The purpose of that language is to give us freedom to serve up that page. We can't possibly anticipate every thing that will happen. Ultimately our success depends on treating the homesteaders well. If we break that trust our business model will collapse." Brady said the clause would allow the company to take pages they want to use to promote the company or the site and censor pages, removing foul language or offensive material. Users who reject the terms should email the company and their material will be removed promptly. A number of GeoCities homesteaders have already stated that they plan to move.
