SC - OT: Web copyright -- can Earthlink use my material?

[david friedman]

At 9:26 PM -0500 2/3/01, rcmann4 at earthlink.net wrote:

>  I just took a look at
>the Earthlink web-construction page.  The legal fine print includes this
>paragraph:
>
>"Your posting of material on the Web site or providing material to
>EarthLink to use on the Web site will be deemed to be a grant by you to
>EarthLink of a license to the material to include the material on the Web
>site and to reproduce, publish, distribute, perform, display, and transmit
>the material and to prepare derivative works as may be reasonably
>necessary to do so, and you waive all rights of attribution and integrity
>with respect to the material ."
>Does this mean that they could, say, publish a recipe booklet and leave
>my name off it?  Or that they could legally object to my publishing it
>elsewhere?


I don't think so.

Note that you are licensing them to do all of those things "as may be 
reasonably necessary to do so," where "do so" is "include the 
material on the web site." So I think what the language means is that 
if they back up their web server, including your files, to tape, you 
can't sue them for copying your files--even though copying your 
material without permission would violate your copyright. If they get 
the message that represents someone else on the web trying to read 
your page and respond, as they should, by sending a copy of your file 
to his browser, they aren't violating your copyright. If the HTML 
file representing your web page doesn't have your name on it, they 
can send it in response to a browser request without adding your 
name--thus (if they didn't have permission) arguably violating your 
rights of attribution. Etc.

Does the language say somewhere that all those rights you have 
licensed to them vanish if you decide to give up the account?
- -- 
David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/