A friend of mine who goes by Ergot brought this to my attention:

[quote]"AOL has posted new terms of service for AIM, that include the right for AOL to use anything and everything you send through AIM in any way they see fit, without informing you. A sample passage: '...by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium. You waive any right to privacy.'"

Although you or the owner of the Content retain ownership of all right, title and interest in Content that you post to any AIM Product, AOL owns all right, title and interest in any compilation, collective work or other derivative work created by AOL using or incorporating this Content. In addition, by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium. You waive any right to privacy. You waive any right to inspect or approve uses of the Content or to be compensated for any such uses.[/quote]

I STRONGLY encourage anybody who doesn't to begin using Gaim with the Gaim-Encryption plugin!  It works great on all platforms, and will stop AOL, its parent, affiliates, friends, neighbors, relatives, etc. from selling your conversations as a book.


<edit> for more information: http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/05/03/11/2359226.shtml?tid=120&tid=158&tid=17

I don't remember you using gaim encryption.

The encryption only works if the other side has it as well. Unfortunately, many of my friends could care less about this new clause in the TOS and won't bother to use encryption. But that doesn't stop me from using my security certificate issued from my school.

Last time I downloaded that plugin, it said I had too low of a version of gaim. I updated my gaim, and now it is too high. :P Something doesn't want me to use that plugin..

[quote author=Maddox link=topic=10895.msg103426#msg103426 date=1110619264]
I don't remember you using gaim encryption.
[/quote]

I've had it for a long time.  Since shortly after you told me about it, in fact.

It'd be even better if people would use Jabber, since it was actually designed from the start to be relatively (I say relatively since I don't care to know the inner workings) secure.  Sadly enough, people seem to only care about security once theirs has been compromised.

[quote author=EpicOfTimeWasted link=topic=10895.msg103466#msg103466 date=1110647615]
It'd be even better if people would use Jabber, since it was actually designed from the start to be relatively (I say relatively since I don't care to know the inner workings) secure. Sadly enough, people seem to only care about security once theirs has been compromised.
[/quote]

I'll use Jabber when there are major hotties on it...

Was my post just deleted? >:(

Im sure i posted on here  >:(

I had
[quote]
Privacy on AIM is very lame. What about if u had ub3r private things? :P
[/quote]

If i remember correctly. Or maybe i forgot to press Post.

Well if it was deleted; Why?

[quote]Content You May Use
AOL, its vendors and AIM users who lawfully post content such as information, software, games, communications, photos, video, graphics, music, sound and other materials ("Content") on AIM Products own the property rights to that Content.[/quote]

So if you send somebody a song that you wrote, AOL can sell it as theirs?

edit: Thanks to Mr. Lenny for pointing that out to me.

Perfect example right there of what AIM wouldn't do, but Iago did.  Which was give credit  ;D

Another interesting part:
[quote]You agree that you will not take any action to interfere with AOL's or its vendors' ownership of or rights in the Content and you will not attempt to circumvent any mechanisms for preventing the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of the Content. [/quote]

As Iago pointed out in our conv, would this include encryption?

It sounds to me like AOL is going to start doing some major (stealthy) data mining.  I doubt they'll outright steal stuff, but they'll probably start monitoring for keywords and such.  I'd be very paranoid to use AIM unencrypted in the future.

Hmm Are DC conversations monitored by AIM?

Well they never go thru aim.  So I would think not.

[quote author=iago link=topic=10895.msg103503#msg103503 date=1110655157]
[quote]Content You May Use
AOL, its vendors and AIM users who lawfully post content such as information, software, games, communications, photos, video, graphics, music, sound and other materials ("Content") on AIM Products own the property rights to that Content.[/quote]

So if you send somebody a song that you wrote, AOL can sell it as theirs?

edit: Thanks to Mr. Lenny for pointing that out to me.
[/quote]

If you found a way to do it without a direct connection, sure.

Here is AOL's condensed tos:
[quote author=AOL]
W3 PWN J00
[/quote]

[quote author=Lenny link=topic=10895.msg103536#msg103536 date=1110666900]
Well they never go thru aim. So I would think not.
[/quote]
So then whats the problem? Eveyone just use DC..

...
what about Secure-IM on trillian?

Trillian sucks.  Also, only other people with Secure-IM can use it.  Someone needs to make a global encryption that works on gAIM, AIM, and Trillian.

well mr.bunny, why dont you?

If anybody knows how to make a Trillian plugin, it would be neat to modify Gaim-Encryption to work on Trillian.  If you did, you could probably submit them a patch and get your name on the site :)

this page has info on how to do that.

http://www.trillian.cc/support/sdkmanual.php

Didn't this new part of the TOS happen in like February of 2004?  Nothing has happened with it so far.

Also: [url]http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/05/03/14/0138215.shtml?tid=158&tid=120&tid=215&tid=95&tid=17[/url]

How do you know nothing's happened with it? Depending on how they use it, it's hard to say.  They could be doing massive data-mining.