Re:Something Scary for you Geocities Site Owners...

Leroy Van Camp III wrote:

>     I know a fair number of the people on the two lists I Admin
> have Geocities sites, so I thought this might be of interest.
> Below is a section from the new terms of service for all Yahoo
> services, which now includes Geocites.  It's very, very
> scary.

Yeah, this has come up on the other list that I'm a member of as well (the Star
Wars RPG list). One of the guys on that list recieved the following letter from
Yahoo after sending them a letter asking about the new terms:Thank you for
contacting us re: Yahoo! GeoCities.
We'd like to be really clear - Yahoo! does not claim to own content
submitted to it by its users.

Our terms of service require homesteaders to grant us the right to
reproduce and otherwise use their content when we post and maintain it
on the Yahoo! Network.  There are simple and important reasons we have
this policy and they are designed to benefit you. Listed below are two
of the biggest reasons:

1. When you upload a Web page or image to us, we often need to copy it
to put it on the many computers that we use to serve home pages to
people that want to look at your page. We need you to give us the right
to copy and reproduce that content.

2. We also might want to feature your home page on the front page of
Yahoo! GeoCities or elsewhere on the Yahoo! Network, so you can get more
people to see your page. We need to have that right; otherwise we
couldn't reproduce this content.

Yahoo! has always been focused on providing users with a compelling
experience on the Web, and the Terms of Service are standard throughout
the Yahoo! Network.  We hope you understand that all of our actions are
taken with you, the user, in our mind.

Thank you again for taking the time to write to us.

The bad news is that this seems to be a form letter, and from what I can infer
from the terms of agreement they give Yahoo! rights to ANY pictures or anything
posted on a Yahoo! page, which means that if you have a Spelljammer page on
there using the Spelljammer logo, Yahoo! could then try to claim ownership of
the logo, which would get TSR/WotC pissed off, and would give them an actual
legitimate reason for clamping down on fan sites... My advice for everyone who
has a site on Geocities is that they move it post haste, there are other free
webpage providers out there, like Angelfire, Xoom.com, etc.
By the way, I apologise for the off-topic post, but I feel that it's important
for anyone with a Geocities page, and I know that a lot of people on the list
have them.

--
so sleep tonight
in idle dreams
the pain will drown
your silent screams

and you want it all