for any legal (or just knowledgable) folks on my flists

[kaigou]

[Site-name redacted since that's not the issue.]

I think I'm getting what they're saying, and I'm not sure I'm liking it, so maybe I'm missing something. What does the following mean, in real-world non-fancy terms? Or at least, what's your impression of what it (might) mean?

"By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content, messages, text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, profiles, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, "Content") on or through the Services, you hereby grant to [site], a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense through unlimited levels of sublicensees) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute such Content on and through the Services. This license will terminate at the time you remove such Content from the Services. You represent and warrant that: (i) you own the Content posted by you on or through the Services or otherwise have the right to grant the license set forth in this section, and (ii) the posting of your Content on or through the Services does not violate the privacy rights, publicity rights, copyrights, contract rights or any other rights of any person. You agree to pay for all royalties, fees, and any other monies owing any person by reason of any Content posted by you to or through the Services."

Comments

[nagasvoice]

I don't think you can tell, from the information here, which it is. And the context of the service provided is important.
Hosting where people are parking original content (such as blogs or pix) may have TOS similar to this sometimes, if you compare Picasa or Flickr or Photobucket. That doesn't make it right or enforceable, when the hosting company is claiming all rights to that material. IMHO (not an attorney, not legal advice, disclaimers as with other folks commenting above) I see a blur going on there compared to TOS clauses for a social media site where people are grabbing pix of stars from commercial media that they really don't own the rights for, but nobody's seriously enforcing it.

[kaigou]

It's for one of the major bookmarking applications, so the only content I can see that'd be copyrighted by the user might be, I don't know, the specific tags they've chosen, and any notes they add. (I don't even think you could really copyright a tag selection, for that matter.) That's assuming the notes aren't just a copied paragraph from the story/article. Outside of notes and maybe some correspondence between users, what other content is anyone providing that's their own? Not much, that I can think of -- which makes this all the crazier.