Friday, September 29, 2006
Notes on a conversation between employer and employee about the relative organizational skills of various people in The Office
“Ah, so you found it! Great!” said Smirk. I was standing outside, behind the building looking for a document that he dropped when leaving the office.
“Yup, have it right here in my hand,” I said into the cellphone. “And I'll put it … um … ” Thoughts of Smirk's office danced in my head. And it wasn't a pretty sight. “I'll put it on my keyboard.”
“Yeah,” said Smirk, “don't put it on my desk. I'll never find it.”
“… with our use or exploitation of any Posting.”
You may not use any computerized or automatic mechanism, including without limitation, any web scraper, spider or robot, to access, extract or download any Content from our Service, and as an express condition of your use of our Service, you warrant to us that you will not use the Service for any unlawful purpose or purpose prohibited by this Agreement. If you violate any part of these Terms of Use, your permission to use Content automatically terminates and you must immediately destroy all Content in your possession or under your control.
DADA.NET™ SERVICES—TERMS OF USE (emphasis added)
So … I can't use a computer with a web browser to access the site?
Guess not.
We require all our users, including Registered Users and Subscribers, to respect all copyrights, service marks, trademarks and other intellectual property rights of ours and others. On notice, we will act expeditiously to remove Content that infringes the copyright rights of others and will use all reasonable commercial efforts to deactivate and disable access to our Service of anyone who uses our Service to repeatedly infringe the intellectual property rights of others and if you wish to send us such a notice, please use the following procedures: If you believe our Service contains elements that infringe your copyright or the copyright of anyone else, please click on the following link to go directly to our Notice and Procedure for Making Claims of Copyright Infringement and follow the procedures that are described. Of course, if you believe any Content violates any of our Terms of Use, please send us a message about it at mobi.us@dada.net. We cannot guarantee we will respond to your message and we reserve the right to take or refrain from taking any or all steps available to us once we receive any such message.
DADA.NET™ SERVICES—TERMS OF USE (emphasis added)
And there's no link to be found on that page.
Clue-by-four anyone?
If you have downloaded Content, it is your responsibility not to destroy or damage such Content because we are not responsible if any Content you download is lost, destroyed or damaged. We have no obligation to restore your Content if that happens or to maintain records for the purpose of our or your doing so and that is solely your responsibility. Once Content is transferred to your portable device as permitted, you may not copy, distribute, transmit or transfer it from that portable device to any other portable device or media. You are also prohibited from sharing downloads, enabling or allowing the sharing of downloads, with anyone else. Our Community Requirements contain additional rules, requirements and guidelines concerning your obligations with respect to Content, our Communities and the Service.
DADA.NET™ SERVICES—TERMS OF USE (emphasis added)
Now I'm beginning to think that English isn't their first language (then again, lawyers are not known to speak any known human language to begin with).
The rest of the document is your standard “we don't own your content but we can exploit it, resell it, use it, abuse it, or anything else we can think of without remuneration on our part” and “we don't really guarantee anything on this site will work at all” but the parts I quoted—quite clueless about this stuff.
Sheesh.
I'm also having a difficult time finding out what the site actually does or why anyone would sign up—the site itself is very unwieldy and horribly confusing.
Then again, given their Terms of Use, it's no wonder.
Then there's this beauty from their requirements page:
You acknowledge and agree that Postings from you, from your wireless or mobile device or from your User ID are your responsibility and therefore, you, not us or any other party are entirely responsible for the consequences of your Postings. We assume no responsibility for Postings, their deletion or any failure to store, transmit, receive, make available, display, forward or deliver Postings in any manner, timely or otherwise, even if due to our Service or Website, so don't rely on us, our Website or our Services for any Posting. With respect to each and every one of your Postings on our Website or in connection with our Services, you agree, represent and warrant to us that:
(a) you are placing your Posting in the public domain without reserving any rights or further control over your Posting or its use. You specifically, unconditionally and irrevocably authorize us, at our option, to use your Posting, in whole or in part, throughout the universe, in perpetuity in or on any and all media, now known or hereafter devised, discovered or developed, whether alone or together, in combination or as part of other information, content and/or material of any kind or nature, without compensation, notice or any accounting or accountability to you or anyone else;
(b) if your Posting incorporates a name, logo, brand, service or trademark, voice, likeness, image or other distinctive identification or reference to any person, firm or enterprise, you have the right to place that Posting in the public domain and grant us the right to use that Posting as described in our Terms of Use, including these Community Requirements;
…
(f) neither we, nor any other party, shall be required to pay or incur any sums or compensate you or any person, firm or enterprise as a result of or in connection with our use or exploitation of any Posting.
DATA.NET™ SERVICES—OUR COMMUNITY REQUIREMENTS" (emphasis added)
See? Exploitation.
I actually enjoy reading these Terms of Services, privacy statements and disclaimers because inevitably, they sound like they're written by people who have no clue how the Internet or even computers work. They even state all the evil things they'll be doing, like installing spyware, selling your information, and restrict what you can do on your own computer.
Clue-by-four.
Make that a clue-by-six.
