Aviary.com Aviary’s terms of service for its free product are spelled out in two columns: one covering the ‘full legal agreement’ and, next to it, a summary in ‘layman’s terms’. In the full legal agreement, a section, ‘grant of license’, reads like this: Subject to your (“Licensee”) full compliance with all of Terms of this agreement (“Agreement”), Aviary, Inc. (“Aviary”) grants Licensee a non-exclusive, revocable, nonsublicensable, nontransferable license to download and use the API solely to embed a launchable Aviary application within Licensee’s mobile or website application (“App”) and to access data from Aviary in connection with such application. Licensee may not install or use the API for any other purpose without Aviary’s prior written consent. Licensee shall not use the API in connection with or to promote any products, services, or materials that constitute, promote or are used primarily for the purpose of dealing in: spyware, adware, or other malicious programs or code, counterfeit goods, items subject to U.S. embargo, unsolicited mass distribution of email (“spam”), multi-level marketing proposals, hate materials, hacking/surveillance/interception/descrambling equipment, libelous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, abusive or otherwise offensive content, prostitution, body parts and bodily fluids, stolen products and items used for theft, fireworks, explosives, and hazardous materials, government IDs, police items, gambling, professional services regulated by state licensing regimes, non-transferable items such as airline tickets or event tickets, weapons and accessories. In the layman’s terms, that section is paraphrased like this: Use Aviary the way it’s intended (as a photo-enhancement service), or get our permission first. If your service does anything illegal or potentially offensive, we don’t want Aviary to be in your app. Nothing personal – it just reflects badly on our brand or creates awkward legal situations for us we’d rather avoid. This is a good example of a company making their terms and conditions easy for users to understand. We would like to see more of this from other companies.
All that’s digital isn’t gold
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