Today, I’ve been busy taking a look on an article that wrote an CNET editorialist Matt Asay that title: “does Google own your content?“. It’s found on a post by ZDNet’s Joshua Greenbaum, which explain the terms and conditions of Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Here’s the its passage:
“Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services. You or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any Content you submit, post or display on or through Google services and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, modify, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services. Google reserves the right to syndicate Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services and use that Content in connection with any service offered by Google. Google furthermore reserves the right to refuse to accept, post, display or transmit any Content in its sole discretion.”
According to Asay means that T&C of Google is hazarding claim of possession while certainly it not states that copyright belongs to the content owner. Also consider that the above passage only applies to content that is made public, so it’s not relevant to your private documents.
Instead, Greenbaum’s, Writely co-founder Sam Schillace said:
“As we state in our terms of service, we don’t claim ownership or control over your content in Google Docs & Spreadsheets, whether you’re using it as an individual or through Google Apps. Read in its entirety, the sentence from our terms of service excerpted in the blog ensures that, for documents you expressly choose to share with others, we have the proper license to display those documents to the selected users and format documents properly for different displays. To be clear, Google will not use your documents beyond the scope that you and you alone control. Your fantasy football spreadsheets are not going to end up shared with the world unless you want them to be.”
It’s true that the T&C could be misconstrued when it comes to the words “modify” but I think Asay’s the idea is not plausible and has need to be reviewed. so I opted to accept Schillace’s version because Nowhere in Google’s T&C does Google claim ownership of your content. I would love to hear your thoughts on this especially if you have any other possible comments on this argument
