This morning, I was going through my twitter feed and came across a Chris Pirillo entry about getting 1TB of online storage for free. Now, that is very intriguing. In Amazon S3 terms (the best pricing for reliable online storage that I have yet to see), 1TB would cost $150/mo, plus transfer fees, which I calculated at around $54/mo. (especially if you are using the storage for continual backups). Amazon's S3 service has proven extremely reliable and safe for my needs (I'm backing up things like photo and iTunes/music libraries - not private documents) and the pricing tends to be reasonable when you calculate the cost of maintaining space for the backups on your own. Thus, it is hard to not take a second look when someone mentions you can pay $0 for something that costs over $150/mo at the most reasonable place you know of.
I cruised over to Oosah and started to take a look at their service. It looks very interesting, as they offer ways of creating image, video and music mashups. You can connect content from disparate services and upload your own content. It also looks like they support a multitude of codecs and file formats. All of this looks fantabulous, until you read between the lines:
9c. Ownership of Content: You retain all ownership rights in your Content. However, by posting Content to Oosah, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to Oosah (and its successors) an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, assignable, royalty free, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, distribute and to prepare derivative works of such Content in connection with the Site and any current and future services offered by Oosah, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. (from Terms & Conditions)
As with many of these types of agreements, I understand why Oosah wants perpetual rights to your content - to do with it as they please forever - but it is not something I am interested in handing over to anyone; whether or not they are providing me of some type of compensation in return. This is the same type of verbiage that recently caused an uproar over Google's Chrome browser (i.e. in their first EULA, they received and retained ownership over any content created and/or uploaded via their browser). I'm not sure if the content I create will ever be worth something, but I do have enough foresight to know that by passing on perpetual rights to my copyrighted works, I give up the ability to control what happens to it. When I'm taking the time to create things on my own time, on my own dime, I at least wish to control what happens to it in the future. You never know what type of value your works may have as time goes on.
Perhaps you don't care whether or not you retain ownership of your creations. That is up to you. Before you sign up for a service, however, be sure to understand what you are giving up in return for what they are giving you. Good luck to Oosah. Sorry, though, its not a service for me.
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