I Hate Fine Print
All Posts,  Rants

I Hate Fine Print!

I have a diary on another site. I recently read their terms of use as it has changed since I signed up to use the site. According to the fine print it looks like they are claiming the right to use my diary contents any way they see fit at any time with no obligation to me. On the other hand, I am not permitted to use my own material without their permission.

As soon as I read that I decided to try and remove my work from their site. First I deleted a page. It disappeared from my diary but remained on the web at its original url. Deleting it simply took it off me — not off the site!

My next attempt involved trying to edit the content to remove it from the site. I edited two pages to remove most of the content but left some unimportant stuff behind. That seemed to work. The new version was on the original website address and going to the page from Google took me to the new version.

When I went back to edit my work and remove some more of it from their site it didn’t work. I edited the pages but they remained the same. They had also put back the content of the last page I previously edited successfully.

I contacted the site to ask why they are not letting me edit my own diary and they said I must be mistaken. They said they were able to edit the diary so I should be able to. They gave me instructions on how to edit my pages.

I followed their instructions and the content still does not change. I tried replacing the original content with altered content of the same length but I am simply not permitted to alter the contents of my diary in any way any more.

I have writing privileges to the diary. I can add an entry but I have no editing rights from the look of it.

My diary gets around 20 hits, or more, a day and it looks like search engines bring in most of those so it seems to be a major player on the site. It adds a lot to the stats that let them sell advertising and they are not about to let me mess with that from the look of it.

I have made the diary private. That stops people from reading the stuff but it doesn’t stop them getting the stats from people the search engines send who want to read it. It also does not stop the diary site from using the contents any way they want to at any time in the future. They may even make the diary public again as soon as my back is turned.

Can I take every entry on that site with content I want to retain copyright over and rewrite it for this site or will that breech their copyright claims I wonder?

Guess I will have to find a lawyer and ask what rights I have. I hate when this sort of rubbish happens to me.

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