LJ TOS
The LiveJournal Terms of Service was originally word for word ripped off from one of Yahoo!'s. Though written in legalese, it is easier to understand than many click-through EULAs. Its words often completely conflict with the secret policy document that LJ Abuse uses to enforce the TOS. This leads many to believe it is a mysterious and subjectively enforced thing. Its inconsistent and arbitrary enforcement by LJ Abuse has caused somewhat of an exodus from LiveJournal including such internet celebrities as jameth.
LJ Abuse likes to claim the LJ TOS protects LJ from legal liability. However, none of the LJ Abuse staffers has studied law and obviously don't understand law; although Brad's mom likes to watch Matlock reruns. Neither the TOS nor the secret policy document have ever been reviewed by an actual attorney.
Upon the buyout of LiveJournal by Six Apart Bradfitz had this to say:
Why is the TOS and privacy policy changing?
Our old TOS and privacy policies apparently sucked, from a lawyer point-of-view. We never had lawyers create or really even review the old ones... they were just a hodge-podge of misc lawyer-sounding things people had collected over time. A lot of the things that were changed are actually now better for the users. We just needed to clean things up.
Specific passages
One of the most alarming, and therefore best sections of the LJ TOS is where it specifies that you agree to allow the service to own your content, at which point it may choose to resell that content to you, at its leisure. From XIV. JOURNAL CONTENT:
- LiveJournal reserves the right, without limitation except by law, to serve any user Original Content on the web, through the downloadable clients and otherwise. LiveJournal also reserves the right, without limitation, to resell any portion of a user's LiveJournal back to that individual;
External Links
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LJ TOS is part of a series on Visit the LiveJournal Portal for complete coverage. |