Who’s Data is it Anyway?
Last week I saw an interesting video making the rounds which included a few comments about the legal ownership of data available on the web. For instance, flickr is nice, but in order to put one of my pictures uploaded there on my blog, I have to make a link to the flickr page with that image.
Makes sense from flickr's point of view - it's how they pay for things. But it brings into question - Who's data is is anyway? I mean really... if they can make that rule, and Yahoo's music service can go dark, then what guarantees are there that my images uploaded to flickr aren't going to disappear? Or find their way into someone's photo gallery?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
This is one of the reasons I've tended to stay away from these "repository" sites - or hosted source control like SourceForge, hosted Subversion, etc. You never know what your rights are, and what theirs are. Even if you don't plan on having something of value there, are you opening yourself up if you put something up there, later decide to remove it and then try to claim it's really "yours"?
I'm certain there are some cases and some sites where you're out of luck the second the first upload it complete. It's theirs. and nothing you can do is going to change that. You just loose.
With the fact that license/usage agreements can include language that essentially says "subject to change without notice", you can't even be assured that you'll be alerted if the rules of usage change while your data is hosted there. It's almost impossible for the non-lawyer to know what they legally can do and can't do. And saying "Hey, it's a picture of me" doesn't count for squat in a courtroom.
So it's tough for me to see what the best course of action here is. I've decided not to post a lot of things to flickr even though it's a decent service, and could be really useful, but it's that like to the flickr page that causes me to pause.
Skitch is different - they might very well go away, and that would be bad, but I'd be willing to pay got Skitch usage/storage. No question. I might be willing to pay for flickr if they relaxed the rules, but I don't think I can trust that they will.
For the most part, I'm using HostMonster, and that I know I own the data. It costs more, but it's worth it. It's my space and my stuff. I've thought about the dotMac and MobileMe, and if they stabilize it out, I might be willing to go that route, but again, it has to be clear that it's mine for me to really depend on it.
I know someday there's going to be a shake-out and these "free" services are either going to have to charge or be a lot more up-front about the ownership issues. But until that day comes, you have to be personally careful. Better safe than sorry.