"By submitting, posting or displaying any Materials on or through the orkut.com service, you automatically grant to us a worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicenseable, transferable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to copy, distribute, create derivative works of, publicly perform and display such Materials."

Thus go the TOS of orkut.com. And orkut is not alone - ryze.com, itsnotwhatyouknow.com, friendster.com , linkedin.com and scores of other people-networking website clones seem to be following the exact same model! tribe.net seems like an exception but then, I might have misread the fineprint... These places ask you to disclose your extremely personal details plus the names of all your friends, who in turn spill their guts. Besides, anything & everything you post automatically and irrevocably gets licensed to the website in question which may exploit it to the kingdom come, in the manner it chooses! Don't these places pose the gravest of privacy and IPR concerns? Why isn't anyone screaming?

UPDATE: This one was rejected as well! In the entire episode, one thing strikes me - although slashdot is portrayed as a free discussion forum, what you eventually discuss is in the hands of a select individuals! So, its really the mood, or maybe the preconcieved notions of the bunch, which shall decide whether a particular thought would even see the light of the day. Worst part is, you can't do nothing about it. Afterall, /. was one of the last assumed bastion of freedom of speech - which now appears crumbling.

"In each such case, the submitting user grants OSDN the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, and display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed, all subject to the terms of any applicable license."

Thus go the TOS of slashdot.org. And /. is not alone - orkut.com, ryze.com, itsnotwhatyouknow.com, friendster.com , linkedin.com and scores of others seem to be following the exact same model! tribe.net seems like an exception but then, I might have misread the fineprint... These places ask you to disclose your extremely personal details plus the names of all your friends, who in turn spill their guts. Besides, anything & everything you post automatically and irrevocably gets licensed to the website in question which may exploit it to the kingdom come, in the manner it chooses! Don't these places pose the gravest of privacy and IPR concerns? Why isn't anyone screaming?

PS: Its a relief that blogger.com comes really clean on this issue. Its TOS clearly state - Pyra may quote or reproduce small portions of your content (if you have made it public) in order to promote your BlogSpot site and/or the BlogSpot service, but only on a fair-use-type basis. And guess what, I am all for fair use :-)

UPDATE: My submission to slashdot.org on the issue got rejected. Well, why would they publish anything that may be seen to be going against their way of functioning?!! Anyway, I would resubmit the story with slashdot.org's references removed and see if they publish it then...