On 30 June 1999, Michael Knight wrote:
> Geocities and Yahoo recently merged and are now trying to, in their Terms
> of Service contract, take intellectual property rights away from their users,
> by forcing their users to sign the contract before they can access their
> accounts. Current accounts. I can't even delete my account with them
> without agreeing that what I put there is theirs to copyright.
Wha...? Got a link to this contract? I don't have a Geocities account, but
sounds like Information Superhighway Robbery. Are they saying they own
content by default, or just have options on it at their discretion? Wouldn't
this blow their limitation on liability regards material published on their
sites? It's one thing to provide storage facilities for others and not be
fully accountable for what others put there, but assuming ownership of the
material, it seems being aware of what they've been given is the more their
responsibility. One might plead that one didn't know the .50 caliber machine
gun was stolen, but excusing ignorance that one owns this .50 caliber machine
gun, "I own so much stuff, I can't keep inventory"--I don't think that works.
