Leevi's blog

This is my blog. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

Fearsome book reviews and silly Terms of Use

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For the past year or two I have been using iblist.com it's a sort like IMDb, but for books instead of movies. Unfortunately it's not that great. Not so many reviews, or features and the some of the features bug out periodically. Like the book ratings keep disappearing, which is sad since that's the very point of that website and it doesn't work right.

Last week I saw someone posting about another book review site, Shelfari.com here on My Opera. Forgot who made the post, but that site looked much better and I considered joining it, but somehow their Terms of Service kept rubbing me the wrong way. Like this for example

You may not use a Shelfari logo or other proprietary graphic of Shelfari [...] to link to this Site without the express written permission of Shelfari.
-- http://www.shelfari.com/TermsOfService.aspx


They have the right to request that I suppose, but thanks to that and few other bits I couldn't really agree with their terms. So I decided not to register there after all and started searching for another alternative.

http://www.similarsites.com/site/shelfari.com suggested Goodreads.com, which seems to be better and their Terms were nicer, although not entirely without oddities.

You agree not to post User Content that: (i) may create a risk of harm, loss, physical or mental injury, emotional distress, death, disability, disfigurement, or physical or mental illness to you, to any other person, or to any animal
-- http://www.goodreads.com/about/terms


I wonder what kind of book review might cause any of those, especially what kind of review (or any text) would cause harm to animals reading it p

mental illness to you

That is especially funny, don't write crazy shit or it might make you go crazy? Quite paradoxical isn't it.

My writings skills aren't that good, or that bad I hope, so that I could cause sanity loss to anyone, so I guess I can agree with those terms. bigsmile Not that I plan to write much reviews, I'm more of a lurker type of person.

Here's my my profile on Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5749623-leevi

Holly Kirby - Lady and the PastSuomenkielinen oikoluku Operaan

Comments

Mad Scientistqlue Wednesday, July 13, 2011 9:11:13 PM

ToS are traditionally strange. Even more so when the site is hosted in Nazi America where you could probably get sued for being born on the 4th of July. p!

Gaddag Friday, July 15, 2011 9:32:09 PM

Try perhaps Library thing http://www.librarything.com

virtualsky Wednesday, January 25, 2012 3:06:56 AM

Great observations, Leevi. EULA and ToS can really take advantage of you, too, if you're not careful. I can't believe how many people use Facebook - they obviously don't read its Terms of Service, which basically claims ownership (right of use) of anything a user posts.

These EULAs are one reason why I've been a happy Linux user for the last decade.

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