Is it time to leave LinkedIn?

[gerisullivan]

LinkedIn had updated its privacy policy and user agreement. It's been quite some time since I've read either document, so it's entirely possible the following troublesome language has been in their user agreement long before now:

] Additionally, you grant LinkedIn a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide,
] perpetual, unlimited, assignable, sublicenseable, fully paid up and
] royalty-free right to us to copy, prepare derivative works of, improve,
] distribute, publish, remove, retain, add, process, analyze, use and
] commercialize, in any way now known or in the future discovered, any
] information you provide, directly or indirectly to LinkedIn, including,
] but not limited to, any user generated content, ideas, concepts,
] techniques or data to the services, you submit to LinkedIn, without
] any further consent, notice and/or compensation to you or to any
] third parties.

Um, er, no. I'm not in the habit of posting original work to LinkedIn the same way I do on LJ and the way I would on Facebook if I were there, the notion that I'm granting them the right to do whatever they want to with information I provide, including ways that haven't even been discovered yet, well, no. This is the exact attitude that's kept me off Facebook. (And, in Facebook's case, their practice of spamming and mis-stating things in ways that drive wedges between friends rather than helping connect them.)

I'll sleep on it, and talk with a few people who understand contractual language and rights better than I do. Until I decide one way or another, I won't be accepting LinkedIn invitations or otherwise using their services since doing so indicates acceptance of this contract.

Comments welcome.

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I don't see how to legally do what any social networking site does in its day-to-day operations without essentially those rights. If they add auto-linking or syntax highlighting or something next week, that's arguably a derivative work. If a partner site implements it, they need the ability to pass that right to the partner. Etc.

LinkedIn isn't a place where you put content, anyway, so it seems mostly moot. It does seem overly strong, but I'm having a hard time lopping off any individual bits as clearly not needed. The normal IP model doesn't mesh very well with how things are used on the web, is the root cause I think.

[madfilkentist]

While I'm no lawyer, it strikes me as unnecessarily broad in many ways. I don't see, for instance, why they need to lay claim to "ideas, concepts, techniques or data" in addition to actual "content," or why they couldn't add a restriction such as "for the purposes of implementing and maintaining LinkedIn's online services."

[madfilkentist]

Specific example: If you mention a patent which you hold on LinkedIn and give its number, then is that "information you provide ... indirectly to LinkedIn"? If so, are you giving them permission to "use and commercialize" the ideas and techniques described in your patent?

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

That's obviously crazy...but not obviously wrong. Okay, the "indirect" thing may be a problem in this kind of way.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Your last restriction prevents them from doing anything closely-tied with partners, which seems to be the big popular thing right now.

I think you're right about at least "ideas, concepts, techniques". Not sure what "data" is in this context.