

Why You Should Think Twice About Opting-In to the Delicious-AVOS Transfer - samoa
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/why-you-should-think-twice-about-opting-in-to-the-delicious-avos-transfer/331

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dlsspy
I only thought once.

The del.icio.us API would allow them to grab pretty much all of it anyway.
I've already migrated mine out to a couchdb-based clone:
[http://xlson.com/2011/01/13/out-off-delicious-and-into-
your-...](http://xlson.com/2011/01/13/out-off-delicious-and-into-your-
couch.html)

This has the nice benefits of always being local and being impossible to take
away from me. :)

(well, I did break my couchdb build with an experimental branch on an
experimental OS, but I'll sort that out later)

~~~
joshu
The API does not give access to other people's accounts.

~~~
eli
Yeah, but I don't get to decide what terms other people opt-in to either.

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ares2012
Sounds like fear mongering. There aren't any terms in there that you won't
find on other sites that allow users to post content. The company is
protecting itself from misuse in a way that might not have been necessary when
the Delicious service first launched in the early days of Web 2.0.

~~~
pyre

      > The company is protecting itself from misuse
    

No. They are _re-defining_ what the term 'misuse' means (from one agreement to
the next). If posting 'obscene' links is not forbidden, then how is it a
'misuse' of the system?

Also, this is the same argument that gets used by large tech companies like
Microsoft for building their patent portfolios. It's 'only for defense,' so
long as there is no reason to use if offensively.

Would you allow the government to put CCTV cameras inside of your home so long
as their promised to only use them in case someone breaks into your home (as
evidence in a trial)? Once they were installed, and their 'foot is in the
door,' how long do you think it will be before that usage is expanded beyond
the original promise through a series a baby steps?

Overly broad legal wording as a 'defensive' move is a cancer on our society.

~~~
pstack
No, I agree with the fear-mongering. I guess the author needed to fill article
space, this week.

I'm a privacy-nut type of person and I hate restrictive and absurd licenses.
I'm a fan of telling the man to eat it. Note that I'm not justifying
restrictive or broad legal agreements, either. I think it's stupid. I just
don't think it's any more stupid than similar agreements for similar sites
that provide similar services that most of you (including the author of that
article) already use every day.

However, I don't see anything in the agreement that you wouldn't normally see
on any _other_ social networking site. Unlike some other online bookmarking
services, Delicious _is_ a social-networking/bookmarking service, which would
explain the concern over content and age and so on. It would perturb me if I
was having to agree with something like that for a service which was only me
saving bookmarks with comments and tags for my own use that only I would see
or access via my own account for myself, but that isn't what Delicious has
turned into. Very possibly, they may have even bigger "social networking"
ambitions for the service after the purchase, which may further necessitate
such stringent clauses.

Besides, if one cared much about that sort of thing, chances are that they
wouldn't stop using Delicious _now_ , because they would have already stopped
using Delicious when Yahoo! bought them, for similar concerns over privacy and
agreements.

~~~
dotBen
I don't think the author wrote the piece to fill article space because she is
sitting across the dinner table from me and we've been discussing it all
evening :)

The issue - which has already been reiterated above - is that the Ts & Cs that
the existing service operates under are changing to a far more restricted set.

Your argument kinda meanders around being a privacy nut and sticking it the
the man, then you say you are not justifying a stupid agreement then you say
all agreements at all sites are stupid anyway. I've no idea what your point
is, frankly.

But you do say that the new terms are totally like all other social network
sites. Well the old/existing delicious is a social network (as you state) and
the new terms are very much not like the old terms. Clearly not all social
network terms are equal.

 _Besides, if one cared much about that sort of thing, chances are that they
wouldn't stop using Delicious now, because they would have already stopped
using Delicious when Yahoo! bought them, for similar concerns over privacy and
agreements._

Except that the Ts and Cs didn't change much when Y! acquired them which is
why there was no need to opt-in like there is now.

~~~
shareme
It snot changing to a more restrictive set just a more defined set of TOS
terms rather than being ignorant of things in the USA such as DCMA, etc.

~~~
pyre
What in the DMCA covers offensive or obscene material? I thought that it only
covered copyright.

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giberson
While the policy change does fundamentally allow the company to determine what
content to keep and to remove I'm not sure how that provides you with a valid
concern about opting in your data for the transfer.

IE, if you don't opt in you're basically self censoring yourself as none of
the data will get used. If you do opt in, then the majority of it may remain
[or be stricken depending on the content you favored bookmarking].

Rather your statement should read "Think twice about opting-out of the
delicious-avos transfer. If you opt out then NONE of your data will be kept".

~~~
cracki
The issue is control and safety. I expect my bookmarks to be complete, to
_not_ disappear silently and randomly.

I'd rather build my own little bookmarking system on a LAMP server (I will
probably do that) than subject my digital life to a company that threatens to
cut holes in it.

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eli
I think it's a good question to ask AVOS. It could well just be broilerplate
legalese.

That said, it's quite easy to backup your Delicious links. Probably a good
idea to do that regularly regardless of the terms.

------
cracki
sweet little command to dump your delicious bookmarks (copied/stolen from the
Scrumptious setup guide):

    
    
        curl -u <user>[:<pass>] -o mine.xml https://api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/all
    

That's now running hourly on my computer. I'll write myself a "loss check"
too, to see if any of my "questionable" (private) bookmarks start
disappearing.

~~~
realityloop
unfortunately this currently returns:

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?> <result code="api temporarily
unavailable" /> <!-- fe02.api.del.ac4.yahoo.net uncompressed/chunked Sun May 1
07:46:07 UTC 2011 -->

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mahrain
It sure seems like the new South Park episode got people to read terms and
conditions ;-)

