Google Drive - all your base are belong to us

    Yesterday Google presented the new Google Drive service, which caused a lot of conflicting opinions - on the one hand, the corporation had been waiting for online storage and synchronization / backup services for a long time, on the other hand, the increase in the price of paid storage made Drive “another cloud storage”. But we’ll not talk about this, but about strange conditions of use, which are now the same for all Google services, including Google Drive.

    In the current version of the terms of use, there is an extremely interesting paragraph
    By downloading or otherwise adding materials to our Services, youYou provide Google and its partners with a worldwide license that allows us to use this content, post it, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works on its basis (for example, translations, adaptations and other ways of optimizing materials), share it, publish it, openly reproduce, display, and also distribute. The listed rights that you provide to us are used solely to ensure the operation of the existing Services, their promotion and improvement, as well as to develop new ones. The specified license will also be valid after you refuse to use the Services (for example, we will continue to use the company data that you added to Google Maps). Some Services allow you to view and delete content added to them. Some of them also have conditions and settings that impose a restriction on our use of such materials. Before sending content to us and thereby granting a license to use it, make sure that you have the appropriate rights to do so.
    Nevertheless, Google makes a reservation that it does not claim in any way the user's intellectual property.
    In this case, all intellectual property rights in relation to these materials remain with their owner.
    Existing wordings leave quite a wide scope for interpretation - on the one hand, it seems that Google does not claim authorship of downloaded, say, documents, but nevertheless automatically obtains a license to use these products with very broad rights of free production of culture a la Creative Commons Attribution without copyleft. Google, of course, claims that this is done solely to improve the quality of services, but no matter how it was a story with Wi-Fi passwords .
    For comparison, here are the terms of use for Microsoft SkyDrive, Dropbox, Ubuntu One, and Crashplan.

    Microsoft is not far from Google:
    With the exception of the content that we license for you, we do not require ownership of the content provided in the service. Your content remains your property. We do not control, verify or endorse the content that you or others provide in the service.
    On the one hand, everything is great, but the following paragraphs say the same thing as Google, but more succinctly:
    You understand that Microsoft may need to use, modify, adapt, reproduce, distribute and display the content sent to the service exclusively to the extent necessary to provide the service, and you hereby grant Microsoft the right to do so.

    Dropbox - unlike the giants, is much more specific, describing why it needs certain permissions and in what framework it will use them:
    By using our Services you provide us with information, files, and folders that you submit to Dropbox (together, “your stuff”). You retain full ownership to your stuff. We don't claim any ownership to any of it. These Terms do not grant us any rights to your stuff or intellectual property except for the limited rights that are needed to run the Services, as explained below.

    We may need your permission to do things you ask us to do with your stuff, for example, hosting your files, or sharing them at your direction. This includes product features visible to you, for example, image thumbnails or document previews. It also includes design choices we make to technically administer our Services, for example, how we redundantly backup data to keep it safe. You give us the permissions we need to do those things solely to provide the Services. This permission also extends to trusted third parties we work with to provide the Services, for example Amazon, which provides our storage space (again, only to provide the Services).

    In a nutshell: no one infringes on copyright, permissions are needed to provide sharing services for links, create thumbnails-icons, preview documents, as well as the same rights are granted to Amazon, where the service is hosted.

    Ubuntu One reports that data may only be disclosed if required by law or a court order.
    Canonical may disclose any or all personal data and contents you have sent, posted or published if required to comply with applicable law or the order or requirement of a court, administrative agency or other government body. All other use of your personal data is subject to the Ubuntu One privacy policy
    The remaining data collected by the service is non-personalized - such as the version of the system, the frequency of use of the client (it is distributed under GPL v3), the quality of the Internet connection. Canonical provides an opportunity to get a copy of all the data stored by the company.

    Crashplan writes in his privacy policy the following
    Code 42 may use these types of Personal Data for business purposes, including to deliver or provide products or services; to establish or maintain client and business relationships; to provide access to Internet-based and e-commerce activities; to perform accounting functions; and to conduct other activities as necessary or appropriate in connection with the servicing and development of the business relationship.
    This applies to the name / surname, email address, address of residence, etc. When using a private password, Crashplan itself does not know what users store on their server due to encryption. In this way, she is similar to LaCie Wuala.

    I like U1 myself, but Crashplan is better for backup because of cheap unlimited storage and clients for different OSs, including Solaris and Windows Phone, which are supported only on big holidays.

    Thus, quite clear claims arise against Google (and to a large extent against Microsoft):
    a). Put the conditions for using Drive in a separate document
    b). Remove wording on such extended rights
    in). Decrypt each clause of permissions - highlight specific cases of using the user's materials, recognizing all others as illegal.

    PS The same problem was raised in the comments by the habrauzer soomrack , and he also made a comparison with Yandex Disk / Dropbox on roem and LOR .

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