<story><title>Snapchat’s new ‘scary’ privacy policy</title><url>http://www.marketwatch.com/story/snapchats-new-scary-privacy-policy-has-left-users-outraged-2015-10-29</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>simonw</author><text>“You grant Snapchat a world-wide, perpetual, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to host, store, use, display, reproduce, modify, adapt, edit, publish, create derivative works from, publicly perform, broadcast, distribute, syndicate, promote, exhibit, and publicly display that content in any form and in any and all media or distribution methods”&lt;p&gt;This exact language shows up in almost every ToS, and every six months or so a dumb news story blows up because someone who isn&amp;#x27;t a lawyer reads it and gets angry.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not a lawyer either, but I&amp;#x27;m going to try to translate it anyway:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You grant Snapchat a world-wide, perpetual, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license&amp;quot; - you agree that when you upload something to Snapchat you can&amp;#x27;t turn round later and claim they owe you money for doing so.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;to host, store, use, display, reproduce&amp;quot; = to store the data that you upload and show it back to you (or to other people, presumably based on the semantics of how sharing works within the application)&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;modify, adapt, edit, publish, create derivative works from&amp;quot; = create thumbnails. Provide you with an editing interface. Update records in a database relating to the content you uploaded. Build features akin to retweeting on Twitter or resharing or tools that let you add mustaches to your photos or whatever.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;publicly perform, broadcast, distribute, syndicate, promote, exhibit and publicly display that content&amp;quot; = show your content to other people (again, based on the semantics of how those features work in the app).&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;in any form and in any and all media or distribution methods&amp;quot; = again, thumbnails, format conversions etc. If someone invents a new media or distribution method, Snapchat should be allowed to build it into their applications without getting you to re-approve the ToS.&lt;p&gt;I think the fundamental problem here is that ToS need to be written to be as generic as possible. If Snapchat wrote a ToS that legally bound them to the exact way that their app works today, they would have to get a lawyer involved with literally every feature change they make (or feature experiment they run) in the future.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>forgottenpass</author><text>&lt;i&gt;I think the fundamental problem here is that ToS need to be written to be as generic as possible. If Snapchat wrote a ToS that legally bound them to the exact way that their app works today, they would have to get a lawyer involved with literally every feature change they make (or feature experiment they run) in the future.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The very reason most people use snapchat in the first place is that they expect a very limited featureset with tight controls.&lt;p&gt;It rightly should be a cause for concern that they&amp;#x27;re making way for expanding the scope of the service.</text></comment>
<story><title>Snapchat’s new ‘scary’ privacy policy</title><url>http://www.marketwatch.com/story/snapchats-new-scary-privacy-policy-has-left-users-outraged-2015-10-29</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>simonw</author><text>“You grant Snapchat a world-wide, perpetual, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to host, store, use, display, reproduce, modify, adapt, edit, publish, create derivative works from, publicly perform, broadcast, distribute, syndicate, promote, exhibit, and publicly display that content in any form and in any and all media or distribution methods”&lt;p&gt;This exact language shows up in almost every ToS, and every six months or so a dumb news story blows up because someone who isn&amp;#x27;t a lawyer reads it and gets angry.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not a lawyer either, but I&amp;#x27;m going to try to translate it anyway:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You grant Snapchat a world-wide, perpetual, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license&amp;quot; - you agree that when you upload something to Snapchat you can&amp;#x27;t turn round later and claim they owe you money for doing so.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;to host, store, use, display, reproduce&amp;quot; = to store the data that you upload and show it back to you (or to other people, presumably based on the semantics of how sharing works within the application)&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;modify, adapt, edit, publish, create derivative works from&amp;quot; = create thumbnails. Provide you with an editing interface. Update records in a database relating to the content you uploaded. Build features akin to retweeting on Twitter or resharing or tools that let you add mustaches to your photos or whatever.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;publicly perform, broadcast, distribute, syndicate, promote, exhibit and publicly display that content&amp;quot; = show your content to other people (again, based on the semantics of how those features work in the app).&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;in any form and in any and all media or distribution methods&amp;quot; = again, thumbnails, format conversions etc. If someone invents a new media or distribution method, Snapchat should be allowed to build it into their applications without getting you to re-approve the ToS.&lt;p&gt;I think the fundamental problem here is that ToS need to be written to be as generic as possible. If Snapchat wrote a ToS that legally bound them to the exact way that their app works today, they would have to get a lawyer involved with literally every feature change they make (or feature experiment they run) in the future.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>celticninja</author><text>Great, so they have the best of intentions but what happens when they go broke and their data is sold off, the new owners have no obligation to the old users they just own all the pictures and could do whatever they want with it.&lt;p&gt;Additionally who is to say that they don&amp;#x27;t decide down the line that using user pics for profit is fine and something they want to do. How often do we saw laws enacted for what appears to be good reason and then used for other purposes. Why do we think a for profit company would be better at this sort of thing than a government?</text></comment>