Vultr is now claiming full perpetual commercial rights over all hosted content

dev_vps

@jackb said:

@dev_vps said:

@jackb said:
Just to play devil's advocate - I'd bet their legal lot added this in when they launched their cdn services (recently), as they will be directly handling and serving user content -- without checking with the technical side on how it comes across.

Big corporations have Legal IT department.
I have worked for one in one of my previous job.

Usually such a department are more up to speed of the nuances of law rather than tech.

There are lawyers who have BS in computer science and such lawyers are preferred for IP rights and other tech areas.

IIT Kharagpur (same school that Sundar Pichai attended) has a law school too. It has only one field of specialization - intellectual property rights and take only 40 students every year.

This law school was set up in collaboration with the George Washington University Law School, Washington DC

dhmo

What does that mean?
I am confusing

Fubukibox

@dhmo said:
What does that mean?
I am confusing

Something with the tos that says vultr wants to claim everything on your vm boxes or something like that for commercial use over your hosted content on the vm

aj_potc

@dev_vps said:

@jackb said:
Just to play devil's advocate - I'd bet their legal lot added this in when they launched their cdn services (recently), as they will be directly handling and serving user content -- without checking with the technical side on how it comes across.

Big corporations have Legal IT department.
I have worked for one in one of my previous job.

Vultr is not really a big corporation, though. It might have one or two hundred employees at most.

I'd imagine they pay a law firm to do any work as required. It's not like they have legal issues every day and would need in-house counsel.

MallocVoidstar

https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/2024/cloud-prodiver-vultr-has-bone-to-pick-after-reddit-post

Cochrane said this portion of Vultr’s terms of service relates just to messages and content shared on a public discussion forum that Vultr hosts and is not related to the data and apps that customers use on Vultr systems.

“The specific language in the post is, if you post content on one of our public mediums. It was specific to when we had a forum. So if you are posting content on a forum, that forum is owned by us because we have to publicly publish it so other people can see the posts.”

He compared the language to tech debt that is no longer needed, but carried forward, through newer iterations. To avoid confusion, he said Vultr is stripping the language from its terms moving forward.

mikewazar

It appears they have backpedaled

https://twitter.com/Vultr/status/1773456331204149526

dhmo

wait, so vultr only use public posts on vultr's forum?
not userscontent hosted with vultr cloud

cybertech

@dev_vps said:

@jackb said:
Just to play devil's advocate - I'd bet their legal lot added this in when they launched their cdn services (recently), as they will be directly handling and serving user content -- without checking with the technical side on how it comes across.

Big corporations have Legal IT department.
I have worked for one in one of my previous job.

then you should probably have experienced that the legal people dont really understand the business as well.

dev_vps

@cybertech said:

@dev_vps said:

@jackb said:
Just to play devil's advocate - I'd bet their legal lot added this in when they launched their cdn services (recently), as they will be directly handling and serving user content -- without checking with the technical side on how it comes across.

Big corporations have Legal IT department.
I have worked for one in one of my previous job.

then you should probably have experienced that the legal people dont really understand the business as well.

I can’t share much on public forum …..

Calypso

@emgh said:

@Calypso said:
As already explained: no. See it in another way: if you have a great picture of your girlfriend they can, according to these terms, alter it in such a way that she is a covergirl of Hustler magazine. The money made from that buys them a nice new gaming gear so that he use that to be happy and willing to keep on providing you the service. In this way altering and using the picture is linked to keeping your service and could be seen as "according to the rules".

No, it can’t. What you’re describing is some sort of side-effect. The TOS says ’for the purpose’.

If they can make up a story that the usage in that way links to keeping the service running, then they could (yes, could) get away with it when the story is convincing enough. Is it likely? No. But "for the purpose" can be taken very very broad.

I think this will all get fixed, and I don’t think Vultr will steal anyones stuff. That would eliminate them from business use, and, it would mean a bunch of legal fights with their bigger clients. This is not happening.

Definitely true. But I can't understand why they couldn't come up that beforehand. Copy/Pasting "Facebook-like" terms isn't a good thing to start with...

vpshost

That's crazy.

lowenduser1

A Reddit post incorrectly took portions of our Terms of Service out of context,

It's the user that agrees to ToS; If there is consensus that it reads as such, perhaps its a you problem.