> Google could in principle give it away for free to new sign-ups for their service as a promotional goodie.
No they couldn't, because other parts of their ToS explicitly let you retain control over your copyright. You'd sue them, and win. Also, they'd lose all their customers and probably shut down the Google Drive program entirely.
Maybe we should just try and find a lawyer to interpret this impartially (something you should do anyway if you're trying to pick a ToS that's "compatible" with your needs -- you really don't want to get burned by a tricky ToS, do you?), but as far as I understand the whole point of this passage is to allow Google to use your data to test their products, e.g. facial recognition, translation, etc., in an automated fashion.
Exactly like Gmail, I am guessing the contents of individual user's drive accounts are probably scraped at regular intervals by machines for all sorts of purposes. This passage is a CYA for that activity. They're not looking for sneaky ways to get your book into their store.
I'm not saying "use Google Drive over Dropbox!", because I don't give a hoot. But the Drive ToS isn't why you shouldn't use Google Drive.
Of course they could, because you gave them a license to do so.
Facebook and Google do this explicitly already: they use your images and written content, which you presumably have the original copyright on, to sell their products and services (customized ads and the like). They haven't done it with Stross' novel yet, but the legal issues are the same.
The quoted license: "The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones."
That sounds like it should be limiting but a new service can be "giving away copies of stuff we found in peoples gdrives". Would everyone hate Google for that, yes; would that break their ToS, no.
You retain copyright control, means they can't sell [other] licenses and such like actions - but you already gave them and their associates free use [wrt copyright] of your works stored on their systems. They don't need more rights to publish, modify, reproduce, etc., etc..
Indeed they can even effective sub-license by selling the right to be one of "those we work with", then the license you agree to also applies to that other company.
Such ToS enable evil to be done.
It is difficult to construct a ToS that allows the company to do everything it needs to without enabling this sort of thing. They don't want to leave the option you can sue them for copyright infringement if, for example, they share your copyright avatar image with a company that's using an embedded comment system or such like activities.
One can of course encrypt data before sending it to a cloud storage company.
> You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.
Whatever anything else says in the ToS, this wins. Explicit statements always trump implications in contracts. You take that to court, show the judge, and you're on your way to dinner with your winnings later that very same day.
This ToS is not capable of Evil in the way you say. Period.
Also, they'd lose all their customers and probably shut down the Google Drive program entirely
While I agree with your thesis on the whole, I am sad to say that this probably won't happen. People will just think, "Well, I'm not writing a novel so this doesn't affect me" and keep on using it.
My interpretation of what they are trying to say is that they may need to modify stuff by wrapping headers on it and so on to make it work with their systems, but they won't steal your ideas or give them away.
My interpretation of what they are trying to say is that they may need to modify stuff by wrapping headers on it and so on to make it work with their systems,
Or: we make tape backups of data and tapes a shipped to some storage and we cannot guarantee that your data is immediately erased from all our infrastructure (including types) the moment after you delete it.
There is a youtube video from a google engineer that talks about their backup.
Your data is (supposedly) encrypted with your private key. They can't guarantee that all copies are deleted, but they can (at least in theory) delete the key to make the data inaccessible. Whether you believe them or not is a different story...
Yeah, Google would never just, I don't know, start republishing a bunch of books and, when authors or their representitaves complain, say, "see you in court." That's inconcievable!
No they couldn't, because other parts of their ToS explicitly let you retain control over your copyright. You'd sue them, and win. Also, they'd lose all their customers and probably shut down the Google Drive program entirely.
Maybe we should just try and find a lawyer to interpret this impartially (something you should do anyway if you're trying to pick a ToS that's "compatible" with your needs -- you really don't want to get burned by a tricky ToS, do you?), but as far as I understand the whole point of this passage is to allow Google to use your data to test their products, e.g. facial recognition, translation, etc., in an automated fashion.
Exactly like Gmail, I am guessing the contents of individual user's drive accounts are probably scraped at regular intervals by machines for all sorts of purposes. This passage is a CYA for that activity. They're not looking for sneaky ways to get your book into their store.
I'm not saying "use Google Drive over Dropbox!", because I don't give a hoot. But the Drive ToS isn't why you shouldn't use Google Drive.