ICQ sucks. AIM does, too. MSN probably will.

[Nikolas]

I think that we have a couple of law-knowing members here. Let me ask them:

Since you agree on the terms of condition/service when you use something, isn't this kinda binding. I mean if it says that everything transfered with ICQ is thereafter owned by ICQ Bosses then, although it is absolutely ridiculous, since you have agreed on this, what can somebody do.

As most of you know, I don't mind giving away most of my personal information away... But I do keep some things private...

[Redwall]

ECHELON is already reading all your IMs anyway.

[LGM]

I have a strong inkling you also own several hats made out of foil, blodvarg.

I also wouldn't be surprised if you turned out to be some sponsor for the Jabber team.

[TerranRich]

I think the part that's getting to Blodvarg (and myself) is:

you surrender your copyright and any other proprietary right in the posted material or information

It's not a matter of personal information. That I could care less about. It's the fact that ICQ and AOL can steal your ideas if they so choose.

Solution? Just don't discuss your new game ideas or patent-able inventions with anybody via IM.

[Matt Damon]

Wow, people can sure be insulting when someone raises legitimate concerns.

A common attitude is that anyone taking your personal information is okay because you have nothing to hide, and if you DO have something to hide, you're a bad person and should be caught anyway. 

Therefore people like Blodvarg are crazies who should be locked up or maybe just mocked mercilously.

Well, I'm here to tell you to stop dismissing people who have legitimate concerns.  If you really think it's stupid, just ignore it.  It's the same as posting in a post you think is useless.  It just wastes everyone's time.

I for example, am a famous actor, and often use instant messaging to discuss story ideas with Ben Affleck.  According to this TOS, AOL can steal my ideas and sell them to their own media companies.  It may not be legally binding, but if I were not such a famous actor I might not have the resources to fight such a thing in court.  Other poorer writers who like tossing ideas about with friends could experience the same problem and not be able to protect themselves.  And while a TOS isn't enforcable now, all laws are subject to change.  I'm willing to bet several of my millions that if the pressure continues from big companies, TOS documents will become enforceable.

Also, I have a friend who is a sociological researcher doing interviews with people, many of which are of a sensitive nature.  He isn't all that techno-savvy (not like my friend Ben!) and uses instant messaging programs often to perform his interviews--email isn't immediate enough, and many of these interviews are multiple hours long--long distance phoning is too expensive and too hard to record accurately.

Instant messaging is a great discussion tool, but when sensitive materials are being discussed, it is clear from Blodvarg that I should tell this friend to switch to a different program (I personally use x-chat).  That might have been sensible anyway, but I need to thank Blodvarg for bringing this additional info to my attention.  I'll tell him.

What about activists who may be planning a potentially illegal action (such as a mass walkout or wildcat strike, not necessarily even violence).  Without such actions, there would now still be children working in mines, no 8 hour work day, increased taxes, no United States of America, and no free cumpalsary schooling, and yet, the power of AOL could potentially allow them to use the info and provide it to authorities.  It wouldn't be the first time such a thing happened.

What if AOL and Time-Warner runs a presidential campaign and uses discussions between other parties over MSN (they may not be techno-savvy people) to bolster their campaign--say by taking private conversations out of context.  THat is also possible through this TOS.  By the time the other party gets a legal team together, the damage may have been done.

You may not care about your own privacy, but there are many legitimate reasons to do so.  Furthermore, right to privacy is a basic internationally recognized right, and that makes these companies attempted international criminals.  That is not an exageration, it is based on the UN convention of human rights, an internationally recognized law that supercedes all national law (by definition).  There is no procecuting body, but the law is still, as they say, the law.

Now I'm not trying to censor anybody.  In order to censor someone, one has to have the actual power to do so.  I'm just a famous actor.  I'm not a moderator, nor am I a government official, so I cannot censor anyone (except some of my writers), nor do I desire to.  However, I ask that just because you don't care about your own legal rights, do not deliberately insult others for being concerned themselves, especially when they aren't even doing it on their own, but in an attempt to help others.  Just stay out of the discussion. I can't stop you, but please, out of respect for those who have some stake in the situation, just ignore it.  It doesn't concern you.

Unless you are being paid by AOL or something, in which case I invite you in.  Your perspective would be interesting, and it might be interesting to debate with you.

Thanks!

-Matt Damon
(famous actor)

[TerranRich]

LMAO, I totally did not see it was Matt Damon until the second paragraph or so.

[Kinoko]

I was exactly the same. Didn't see your profile until you wrote "I am a famous actor" etc.

Spot on, though! For shame, people ^_^ Privacy is damn important.

[MrColossal]

I never called anyone crazy, but there's a difference between a legitimate concern and a sorta silly one.

Also the company that created the program you are using can claim any type of TOS that they want, don't use programs that you don't agree with. It's pretty simple.

Also, Matt Damon, you raised a lot of extremely unlikely situations... Can anyone find a time that AOL has taken someone's idea out of an IM?

Maybe you say "Just because it's unlikely doesn't mean it can't happen, like Matt Damon's (who is me) popularity after one kind of ok movie." true but that doesn't mean the concern has become legitimate. Meteors fall to earth all the time but no one is scared one will destroy their house and brain them because it's unlikely. Millions and millions of conversations on the internet and AOL or MSN or whoever randomly picked yours, scanned it for marketable ideas and then stole it? Que?

[Squinky]

Also the company that created the program you are using can claim any type of TOS that they want, don't use programs that you don't agree with. It's pretty simple.

One thing I have always found funny about some softwares terms of service is this. I go to the computer store, buy myself the new game and pay 45 bucks or so, take it home, install it, and as I am loading it up the terms come up. Am I supposed to actaully be able to deny the terms at this point? I can't take the product back to the store (Most places in the U.S. won't take back software). So, you pretty much have to agree to the terms......

Which is why men dressed as Nazi's are currently butt-humping my mom....

[bspeers]

I have to say I disagree to some extent both with Mr. Collossal and Matt Damon.

I agree with Mr. Collossal that some of the situations are extremely unlikely--though if the company wasn't ever going to use the TOS, why would it pay lawyers to rewrite it?  It seems absurd to assume that a company is never going to make use of a TOS just because it might harm someone else.  By law, corporations are forced to care about profit 100% -- anything else is supposed to be incidental.  Perhaps AOL Time-Warner might not use their power next week, but it is overstepping their boundaries considerably to add such a line.  Not that they actually can't--I'm talking about ethical boundaries.  You might say that a company has a right to put anything they like in a TOS, but while that is technically correct from a legal standpoint, in this case it's exploitive and unfair, especially to the technically unsavvy.  They can, just as I can technically get away with driving my SUV over hobos (as long as they're in the outskirts of town, no one would ever notice), I probably shouldn't.  I can also close my plant and move to some free trade zone in Indonesia, but that's not a good thing to do.

Squinky is right though.  We can't actually stop a company from making any crazy TOS they want.  Which is why I think I also appreciate what that dude said.  I won't use those chat things for my chatting either.  I care about my rights.

I do think Mr. Collosall is probably wrong--not only have there been many cases of corporations abusing their copywrite (such as the take-over of the board game Monopoly (for about 30 years any way), to privatization of natural products from indigenous farmers, to Amazon.com vs the amazon lesbian bookstore), but also I think the majority of his annoyance seems to be not specifically with you, but with people who did more or less call that dude a tin-foil hat wearing lunatic (as a joke, but a mean one).  I take that back if Matt didn't mean that.

I disagree with Matt Damon about the specific issues and possibilities he/you site.  I think it's more of an issue of the increasing level of control these companies have over other people's ideas, not specifically what these companies might actually do.  It's turning the world into a highly controlled fear-mongering world of copywrite and controll, a rhizomatic structure of surveilance, both panoptic and diverse, as they say (I'm sure Zinn can explain those terms if you're unfamilliar, "Matt").  It's like that song "something's happenin' here,"-- we better stop, children what's that sound, everybody look what's... da duda da da.  Basically nobody's right if everybody's wrong

Oh yeah, also, Matt, what's this about breaking some laws but depending on others?  I understand some laws are unjust and you're talking about laws that supercede laws, higher authorities of law, etc., but it still seems like a contradiciton there.  Do you just support the laws you like?

Also, not to get personal or nothing, but Matt Damon, for a student of famous historian Howard Zinn, you have a pretty shaky grasp of the UN.  Sure there are rules about privace and such, but a company and a country are two different things.  I suppose you could say that the US should get sanctioned for not taking these criminal corporations down (should any evidence of using what they set out in a TOS come up), but then, we already know the US hasn't paid its UN dues in years and spurns every interesting law the UN signs.  You may as well argue that the US leaders (not the populace, who are not implicated and might be nice people with nice cars) should be locked up for sanctioning illegal acts of detention and arrest, promoting torture and using low-level warfare around the world.  Arrest American leaders for war crimes? That's CRAZY talk.

CRAAZY I tell you.

That's all I'll say.

[LGM]

I wasn't being inslting. I just find it highly unlikely AOL staff sit and read every conversation going across AIM.

If they did, the terms "lolz syndrome"  and "133747I7I5" would emerge in the news.

[jfritzyb]

Hmm...

AOL is ok and so is MSN....however I prefer Yahoo! over them all!

Why is this?

I get on the messenger services, look and see if anyone is on that I want to chat with. If so, I start some chat scripts...

...If not, I just leave it on and wait...

They are all ok actually; however, I hear MSN is more virus proof then any other messenger service.

License Agreement? WHAT license agreement?   

Lol...

I use them all; double click on each one and get on-line...yeah, that's the way to go.

ICQ? I dislike ICQ because...

1. I need a more modern computer in order to install it.
2. It looks dull and uninteresting

But what do I know? I've never used it...

--JJ

[Helm]

Dude eric, get outta Troy. Soon enough Brad Pitt is going to do a number on your town.

[Vince Twelve]

Worried about AOL claiming the copyright of every file and idea that passes through its messenging system?  The solution is simple:

1) Make an .iso file of your Windows XP installation CD
2) Send the .iso file to yourself via IM
3) AOL claims ownership of Windows
4) Sit back and watch the legal fireworks display!


Edited because it's!=its

[The Bedminster Incident]

Ok. Some people seem to think that there are actually PEOPLE sitting in front of the ICQ Servers manually reading through every single file, message or whatever that floats through. Of course, this is not the case.
If you were searching for a file with certain words in it, wouldn't you use the search function rather than looking through every file? Get serious, okay?

Now. Let's take an example that is not as "unlikely" as the others apparently seem to be. We do have the RIAA. We do have people who are sick of paying ridiculously expensive prices for CDs. Now, there's a great way to get those people. Let's have the RIAA ask ICQ Inc. to search through their log files for names of popular p2p engines. I'm sure you all agree if I say that the RIAA (despite their talk) have enough money to buy all those logs. And--voilá, we have a use of these "new" TOS.

Then, the typical copyright thingy that naturally comes with this. You already talked about that.

And, really, we are moving into a "1984" direction. And it's even more alarming that some of you are just like "No, I'm not going to read this stuff, it can't be that bad anyways." Sorry, but I do care about my rights as a human being. And therefore, I won't just watch things like that happening.

That's all.
- Blodvarg

[vict0r]

How cool that Matt Damon is on these forums! Especially since its actually Matt, and not bspeers!! One would think so by looking at Matts email address... But i doubt it...

[Nikolas]

And, really, we are moving into a "1984" direction.

I do believe that you are right. But it has begun a long time ago with the CCTVs all around. I mean wherever you go you have to smile, "cause you're on CCTV"! Where's the privacy in that?

At least with ICQ you have the choic (for now) of not to use it. But with the cameras? Can you avoid walking?

[Elliott Hird]

At least with ICQ you have the choic (for now) of not to use it. But with the cameras? Can you avoid walking?

I've been doing well for quite a while now.

[InCreator]

What other personal information are you telling the internet? And if you're willing to put it in your profile then you're willing to let other people read it so... What's the big privacy issue?

Sssh!!!

Spoiler

cybersex!

[close]

Actually, I personally don't care much. Who can assure me that these nice morons at MS aren't already logging my activities and talks?

But do anyone really care? MSN has <uncountable amount> of users. No one could track them all.

Also, what's the fuss about "changing the policy"?
If anyone - for example - dropped a (fake) hint at media about terrorists using MSN - or used to coordinate one of attacks, and media would grab the bait (come on, who wouldn't want to hit Microsoft with some big scandal?) next day every single IM provider on this planet would reorganise privacy policies instantly.

That's what I think...

[ManicMatt]

Just maybe, Bspeers IS Matt Damon! We had a famous actor amongst us the whole time...