Chrome's EULA: Pretty Much Just Evil

All the cool kids are excited over the release of Chrome, Google's new web browser. I expressed some dubious concern over allowing Google that kind of access to my digital habits and information.

Turns out I had reason to be concerned. Look at this gem in the Chrome EULA:

1

1. Content license from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

To deconstruct this a little, if I'd written this post, or any blog post, or Voices, via Chrome... Google would have a perpetual copyright to it. Riiiiiiigggght.

Don't be evil, Google, remember? Your own motto?

Comments

[Andres]

but: "This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services"

being "Services" the browser, right?

[Britain W.]

Holy cow, you're right. Good looking out!

Maybe we'll just wait for someone to recompile from Google's source and release with a benign license like Iceweasel.

[vpisteve]

Hmm, the way I interpret that is that you retain copyright and all rights to your content, but grant Google a license (big difference from owning copyright) to display, modify (such as YouTube does with videos), reformat etc. your stuff as need be for various platforms. They're basically saying that while you own your stuff, you can't charge them for distributing/modifying/reformatting it.

Irrevocable and in perpetuity just means you can't charge them in the future, either.

This is probably in response to recent lawsuits that have been trying to claim that certain video services are breaking copyright simply by converting the format from say, .avi to flash.

Google cache and reformatting stuff to fit, say, mobile browsers might have something to do with it as well.

[Andrea A. Phillips]

As I parse it out (and I am not a lawyer, etc., etc.) this would enable them to, say, use anything posted to Flickr via Chrome in an ad campaign; or any blog post submitted through Chrome. Interestingly, it says it has copyright if you display through Chrome. Which... isn't the choice of the person doing the browsing so much as the person who, you know, created it, possibly through a non-Chrome browser.

I can understand the need toward protection for reformatting purposes, but in that case, wouldn't it be 'for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Content,' and not 'the Services'? Perhaps we should get a lawyer to talk to us. :)

It is, at any rate, something of a legal sledgehammer either way, and almost certainly to cause a PR storm.

[Andres]

mmmh... I don't think they keep track of EVERYTHING that is being posted on every chrome browser in the world !

[Wendy Despain]

As I recall, this is identical language to the EULA for google docs, and there wasn't a PR storm over that.... (and I think has the potential to be more of one, since lots of things created in google docs are not intended for wide distribution.)

I would love to hear an actual EULA lawyer type way in on this though. They speak their own language.

[Andrea A. Phillips]

Well, they've pretty much said "Whoopsie, we'll change that." So huzzah for kicking up a fuss. :)

[Celina]

Andrea is right. Here's a link to a blog post about the change: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-chrome-license-agreement/