> The company is protecting itself from misuse
Also, this is the same argument that gets used by large tech companies like Microsoft for building their patent portfolios. It's 'only for defense,' so long as there is no reason to use if offensively.
Would you allow the government to put CCTV cameras inside of your home so long as their promised to only use them in case someone breaks into your home (as evidence in a trial)? Once they were installed, and their 'foot is in the door,' how long do you think it will be before that usage is expanded beyond the original promise through a series a baby steps?
Overly broad legal wording as a 'defensive' move is a cancer on our society.
I'm a privacy-nut type of person and I hate restrictive and absurd licenses. I'm a fan of telling the man to eat it. Note that I'm not justifying restrictive or broad legal agreements, either. I think it's stupid. I just don't think it's any more stupid than similar agreements for similar sites that provide similar services that most of you (including the author of that article) already use every day.
However, I don't see anything in the agreement that you wouldn't normally see on any other social networking site. Unlike some other online bookmarking services, Delicious is a social-networking/bookmarking service, which would explain the concern over content and age and so on. It would perturb me if I was having to agree with something like that for a service which was only me saving bookmarks with comments and tags for my own use that only I would see or access via my own account for myself, but that isn't what Delicious has turned into. Very possibly, they may have even bigger "social networking" ambitions for the service after the purchase, which may further necessitate such stringent clauses.
Besides, if one cared much about that sort of thing, chances are that they wouldn't stop using Delicious now, because they would have already stopped using Delicious when Yahoo! bought them, for similar concerns over privacy and agreements.
The issue - which has already been reiterated above - is that the Ts & Cs that the existing service operates under are changing to a far more restricted set.
Your argument kinda meanders around being a privacy nut and sticking it the the man, then you say you are not justifying a stupid agreement then you say all agreements at all sites are stupid anyway. I've no idea what your point is, frankly.
But you do say that the new terms are totally like all other social network sites. Well the old/existing delicious is a social network (as you state) and the new terms are very much not like the old terms. Clearly not all social network terms are equal.
Besides, if one cared much about that sort of thing, chances are that they wouldn't stop using Delicious now, because they would have already stopped using Delicious when Yahoo! bought them, for similar concerns over privacy and agreements.
Except that the Ts and Cs didn't change much when Y! acquired them which is why there was no need to opt-in like there is now.
I also preferred the "if you find stuff you don't like, go away" position as opposed to the "now users, don't do stuff people might find offensive" position.
They also don't seem to want me to be able to devise my own way to crawl their site, which has implications for backing up my own bookmarks if there isn't a convenient mechanism to export going forward.