With the release of the new browser Google Chrome, some people went digging into the Terms of Service you click so fast past, and discovered:
[W]hen you download Google’s new Chrome browser, you agree that any “content” you “submit, post or display” using the service — whether you own its copyright or not — gives Google a “perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute” it.
Update: it’s all ok now, they’ve taken the clause out.
Valleywag exposes a few more, such as Facebook’s terms: (emphasis mine)
By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.
… essentially, as I read it, giving Facebook full control of whatever you put up on there. And furthermore, here’s their terms of termination:
Termination
The Company may terminate your membership, delete your profile and any content or information that you have posted on the Site or through any Platform Application and/or prohibit you from using or accessing the Service or the Site or any Platform Application (or any portion, aspect or feature of the Service or the Site or any Platform Application) for any reason, or no reason, at any time in its sole discretion, with or without notice.
This kind of shit is getting insidious.
Google has at the very least said they will withdraw the ridiculous clause in the Chrome license, put in due to laziness because “they copied and pasted the text from other Google legalese without thinking”.
…
Which is reassuring in and of itself.