Picasa what's the catch.

[jas72]

Just used picasa last night (upgraded to picasa 3) and wow what a great tool for pic viewing. I hadn't used picasa for about 18 months and it immediately found all my newer photos arranged them for me as well. The batch rename for the photos is superb as you can add the time and date into the photo name. So much better when you are looking the photos in windows explorer.

How can this really be free? what's the catch?

 

[CaptainCrash]

How can this really be free? what's the catch?

All your pics is belong to us

 

[uv]

By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services

That's actually rather horrific!

 

[Burnsy2023]

That's actually rather horrific!

Google's terms of use always have been. They're not the picture perfect company everyone seems to think they are.

It's quite worrying really, if you accidently added your home made porn to the application Google could distribute it worldwide and there's nothing you can do about it (well, maybe not, but the court fees wouldn't be cheap)

 

[philjohn]

Google's terms of use always have been. They're not the picture perfect company everyone seems to think they are.

It's quite worrying really, if you accidently added your home made porn to the application Google could distribute it worldwide and there's nothing you can do about it (well, maybe not, but the court fees wouldn't be cheap)

That line is in there IIRC so that they can actually perform the service you request - displaying your photos on the website. The transform bit is for resizing to thumbnails and the public performance bit is for sharing your album with other people.

A lot of brouhaha over absolutely nothing.

 

[Kona*]

Doesn't that only apply if you upload the pictures to Picasa Web? How could Google obtain the images from your PC to use them without you uploading them?

 

[Burnsy2023]

A lot of bruhaha over absolutely nothing.

No it's not. I know there is a need to grant a licence, that's not a problem. I have issue with a few bits, primary the irrevocability and ability for them to use it for commercial and publicity means. This is not required to make the service viable.

Doesn't that only apply if you upload the pictures to Picasa Web? How could Google obtain the images from your PC to use them without you uploading them?

No, the terms cover all Google products and services. You're right that they wouldn't have access, but they'd still have the right, which is what I oppose.

 

[philjohn]

No it's not. I know there is a need to grant a licence, that's not a problem. I have issue with a few bits, primary the irrevocability and ability for them to use it for commercial and publicity means. This is not required to make the service viable.

I don't, in that snippet, see anything about using it for commercial or publicity purposes. I've also had a quick skim of the TOS and didn't see anything like that, can you point it out if I've missed it?

 

[Burnsy2023]

I don't, in that snippet, see anything about using it for commercial or publicity purposes. I've also had a quick skim of the TOS and didn't see anything like that, can you point it out if I've missed it?

By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

 

[CaptainCrash]

That line is in there IIRC so that they can actually perform the service you request - displaying your photos on the website. The transform bit is for resizing to thumbnails and the public performance bit is for sharing your album with other people.

A lot of brouhaha over absolutely nothing.

They could easily have drawn up ToS which would have enabled this without giving themselves the all-encompassing right to do what they want with your content, whenever they want, in perpetuity (provided of course it's "promoting the Services" which effectively means "anything we deem in our corporate self-interest").

It's true that most will be unaffected by this, but it's frightening how many people are happy to just supinely surrender their rights these days (whether to corporations or governments), without giving any real thought to possible implications further down the road.

 

[philjohn]

the publicly perform and display parts I've already covered, that's required to show the images to you and others you share them with on the site.

http://picasa.google.com/intl/en_US/web/tos.html is the main Picasa web albums TOS and explains that they will only use your images for promotional uses if you make them publicly available (i.e. not invite only/protected) and will cease when you remove them (well, when commercially possible - i.e. if they are in the middle of an ad run they will stop after taht). Sounds pretty reasonable to me. If you don't want them doing that pay for Flickr Pro or set up your own website.

 

[jas72]

I don't plan to upload any of my photos I'm using picasa to arrange my photo albums.

They also have export to HTML which you can then use to upload the photos to your own site. (not theirs )

Works rather well.

All I have to do in Cpanel is password protect my pics folder and all subfolders and i'm done.

Hackers can still hack if they want but the GP won't bother.

What I'm saying is that for free it's a awsome product with very few negatives. I only wish have the "professional" companies producing these products could do the same.