Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

The quoted license: "The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones."

That sounds like it should be limiting but a new service can be "giving away copies of stuff we found in peoples gdrives". Would everyone hate Google for that, yes; would that break their ToS, no.

You retain copyright control, means they can't sell [other] licenses and such like actions - but you already gave them and their associates free use [wrt copyright] of your works stored on their systems. They don't need more rights to publish, modify, reproduce, etc., etc..

Indeed they can even effective sub-license by selling the right to be one of "those we work with", then the license you agree to also applies to that other company.

Such ToS enable evil to be done.

It is difficult to construct a ToS that allows the company to do everything it needs to without enabling this sort of thing. They don't want to leave the option you can sue them for copyright infringement if, for example, they share your copyright avatar image with a company that's using an embedded comment system or such like activities.

One can of course encrypt data before sending it to a cloud storage company.



Another part of the quoted license:

> You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.

Whatever anything else says in the ToS, this wins. Explicit statements always trump implications in contracts. You take that to court, show the judge, and you're on your way to dinner with your winnings later that very same day.

This ToS is not capable of Evil in the way you say. Period.


It explicitly says you license them('Google') the content for promoting their services.


Is this some kind of irrevocable license that you, as copyright holder, must adhere to forever and always?

Or is it a license you can revoke at any time?


They mention that too ... it's irrevocable by you (according to them at least).




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2026 batch! Applications are open till July 27.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: