Comment by dazig | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dazig | Hacker News Reader

You should really avoid using this service. The terms are really scary. You should read them before using them for anything. They basically take over the rights of anything you put up there and may use them in any way they want. Upload your home movie? They can use it for ads, selling it to 3rd parties, use your audio for a new product or anything else they can imagine. The "best" part is, they provide you no way to delete your data. Once you upload it, they "own" it and they may (and will) keep it forever:

"By posting any User Content on the Service, you expressly grant, and you represent and warrant that you have all rights necessary to grant, to Company a royalty-free, transferable, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, worldwide license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, list information regarding, edit, translate, distribute, syndicate, publicly perform, publicly display, and make derivative works of all such User Content and your name, voice, and/or likeness as contained in your User Content, in whole or in part, and in any form, media or technology, whether now known or hereafter developed, for use in connection with the Service and Company’s (and its successors’ and affiliates’) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels. You also hereby grant each User of the Service a non-exclusive license to access your User Content through the Service, and to use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such User Content as permitted through the functionality of the Service and under this Agreement."

"If the features of the Service allow you to remove or delete User Content from the Service, the above licenses granted by you in your User Content terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete such User Content from the Service. You understand and agree, however, that Company may retain, but not display, distribute, or perform, server copies of User Content that have been removed or deleted. The above licenses granted by you in User Content for which the Service does not provide you a means to delete or remove are perpetual and irrevocable."

Here's a breakdown of what each of these things mean:

royalty-free: Streem doesn't have to pay the user to display the content they upload back to them from our authorized clients (web, desktop, mobile).

perpetual: The right to display the content doesn't expire after some time, unless the account is closed and data is deleted as described in the second paragraph.

irrevocable: Once the user uploads content, they can't tell Streem that they take back the right to display the content, except by deleting the content, which is covered in the second paragraph.

non-exclusive: This is there for the user's benefit. It means that the user retains the right to the content they uploaded, and we don't take exclusive rights on displaying it back to them. So they have full rights to upload/store/do whatever with it elsewhere.

worldwide: These rights are not restricted to a specific country/zone, like the US, because our service operates and displays content around the world.

publicly perform, publicly display: Users can generate public links to their files, so we have to cover the case where they post it publicly and let their content be publicly displayed via the link they created. Publicly display covers still work like images; publicly perform covers "moving" work like music and videos.

derivative works, copies: Gives Streem access to make thumbnails/cover arts (derivative work) and copies of the data (redundant storage).

authorizing others to do so: Lets Streem pass the content through different layers and service providers during the upload, processing, and when data is requested. For example, Streem has to pass the content through a CDN when the user accesses it, which this gives us the right to do.

The main thing that prevents Streem from abusing these policies is the "for use in connection with the Service and Company’s (and its successors’ and affiliates’) business" line. This ensures that we can only operate on the data to provide our service to the user when they authorize us to do so (i.e. if they click the "Share" button, they authorize us to operate on the file to enable it for sharing), and not for something like advertising the user's content to generate money since they haven't authorized us to do that (we'd have to add an opt-in "Advertise this for me" button or add it in to the TOS and appropriately notify everyone if we wanted to be malicious like that, which would be ridiculous for us).

Other cloud storage companies also have very similar TOS's, although they're more colloquial in their wording, so they may be easier to understand, but no different in the rights they're asking for.

If you want a more credible source, take a look at Yishan Wong's (CEO of Reddit) post: http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/1sndxe/weve_rewritten_...

I don't care about interpretations. I care about what is actually written. The phrasing gives them complete control. Royalty-free does not just mean they only have to go through "authorized clients". It means, someone could upload tracks they are recording for an album...then the "Company" could decide to publish it without paying any royalties.

The restriction line also doesn't apply at all. You simply start an affiliate company that does music promotion, then it is within the business line. The terms are a serious joke and horrible for customers. No one should trust a company with their data when the company is taking complete control and ownership of the data, with no restrictions or ability to revoke permission (even when deleting it).

Other storage companies (that I will work with) do not prevent me from using my own encryption to protect the data. So unless they break my encryption, my data is useless to them. Streem doesn't allow encryption, so this isn't like other storage companies. It seems like Streem is using this just to gather lots of content and sell it for profit, advertising and targeting purposes. Really scary...

From the second paragraph you posted, if they created a compnay that does music promotion, it seems like you could delete your files off Streem and they would no longer have the rights to do anything besides store it. In fact, storage seems to be the only right you can't revoke. Isn't this the same for a ton of other companies that allow you to upload content (i.e. doesn't Facebook get to keep your data even when you delete your account?)

ritikm gave a pretty detailed response to why they request those rights. To dismiss that explanation with "Streem is using this just to gather lots of content and sell it for profit" seems like unwarranted FUD.

Or, they could simply put in their terms their interpretation and I wouldn't have a problem. But they didn't. They selected to give themselves full control (even after deleting).

Also, you may want to read that last TOS paragraph closer, especially the part about how they aren't relinquishing control of your data or their ability to copy/distribute it. You only read the first part of it, but ignored completely "The above licenses granted by you in User Content for which the Service does not provide you a means to delete or remove are perpetual and irrevocable."

So, what that actually means is, the entire part before is moot, if Streem isn't giving you access to REMOVE stuff. Which in the previous paragraph of the TOS, they say they don't have to (and won't give you access to REMOVE data). They may let you delete it, but not remove it. Legal stuff is fun to parse and written like this so they have loopholes.

How they behave and act according to their TOS is complete speculation at this point. My concerns are that their TOS is giving them the keys to the kingdom and asking me to trust them. If they only wanted these permissions to stream it, then say that. If they want permissions to transcode it, then say that. If it is just for their use, then don't say they can give other companies access/permissions to it.

It sounds like you acknowledge that your TOS is scary and you know how other companies have fixed this problem but you refuse to do it. Why?

It sounds to me like he acknowledged that other companies are able to phrase their TOS in a more friendly way while still essentially getting you to agree to the same terms. Whether that's "fixing" the problem depends on what you view as the problem, I suppose.

It's definitely on our list of things to do before our full open launch. Sorry for not being on top of this sooner; we'll get this fixed ASAP.

Reddit is a bit of a different situation when it comes to 'irrevocable', reddit posts are very public. This line in the Streem license is scary:

"The above licenses granted by you in User Content for which the Service does not provide you a means to delete or remove are perpetual and irrevocable."

When is the service not going to provide a means to delete, and why? On top of that even when I can delete items there is explicitly no obligation to ever remove it from the server, only to make it unavailable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com