A quick morning post: Upon starting up my RSS feeds and blogs, I discovered that Livejournal has changed their terms of service, which you must agree to before you can do anything with your logged in account. You are given a tiny window through which to read the agreement, and a link that is supposedly to the full text. Some highlights I noted were:
- This Agreement constitutes a public offer in accordance with Article 437 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. By using the Service, including every access to the Website pages by any means, User unconditionally accepts this Agreement in its entirety.
- Any User who does not agree with the terms of the current version hereof in full or in part shall discontinue using the Service in any way.
- The User shall be responsible for any possible loss or distortion of information and for other consequences of any nature which may occur due to the User’s breach of any provisions of the Agreement.
- The technical data transmitted to the Service by the User’s software as well as any other information transmitted by the User to the Service shall be available to the Administration and may be used at its own discretion legally, including targeting the advertising to User.
- Please note that in accordance with part 3 Article 10.1 of the Federal Act of the Russian Federation No. 149 the Administration shall keep the following information and provide it upon the lawful request of the competent authorities regardless of Users will:any information related to receipt, transfer, delivery and/or processing of voice information, written texts, images, sounds, video and other electronic messages of Users and information on Users who performed the above actions, within one year upon performing such actions;
- Please note that, User shall be subject to Article 10.2 of the Federal Act of the Russian Federation No. 149 if more than three thousand Internet users access the Blog (the Blog’s page) within 24 hours.
- User who posted comments in Blog and User keeping such a Blog shall be jointly and severally liable in respect of such comments.
- In respect of any Content which constitutes intellectual property, User provides to the Administration a non-exclusive (simple) license to use his/her Content in order to provide the Service by reproducing his/her Content as well as by making it public for the entire period the Content is posted on the Service. If User participates in any rankings or if User’s Content is used in any editorial projects of the Service, User provides to the Administration an additional authorisation to modify, shorten and amend his/her Content, to add images, a preamble, comments or any clarifications to his/her Content while using it, and in certain cases based on the Service functions, an authorisation to use User’s Content anonymously.
- Mark Content estimated by Russian legislation as inappropriate for children (0 −18) as “adult material” by using Service functions.
- User shall be liable for breaching the terms and conditions hereof, including the requirements to Registration and Content posting, as well as for violation of applicable laws committed by User, including the laws of the Russian Federation and the laws of User’s residence;
- Please note that in accordance with the Russian Federation Act No. 2300-1 dated February 7, 1992, the provisions of the said act related to consumer rights protection do not apply to the relationship between the Administration and Users as the Service is provided for free.
- Paid Services are not subject of this Agreement. The Administration shall not be liable for Paid Services. All Paid Services’ related questions shall be address to Live Journal Inc.
I have a number of concerns about this. If paid services (which include permanent services) are not subject to this agreement, as a permanent user, why do I have to agree to it? How can I agree to be governed by the Russian Federation when I have no idea what I am agreeing to. Legal liability for comments? Excuse me?
I am strongly considering severing the cross post connection between Dreamwidth and LJ, and leaving LJ as a static account just to preserve the username. I want your opinions on this agreement. Please post them on my blog on cahighways, or on my Dreamwidth account, or on Facebook. I WILL NOT READ COMMENTS ON LIVEJOURNAL.
ETA: It looks like if you haven’t approved the new agreement, the DW-LJ crosspost doesn’t work. Good.
ETA #2: LJ, it’s been real. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. There will be no more DW to LJ crossposting, and I do not intend to update my LJ after today. I am not deleting it out of consideration for hard links in posts and such.
