Diary of a Wolfeman

In a wake-up call for the IM generation, Slashdot reports on the new Terms of Service for AOL’s Instant Messenger service, AIM. To quote from the new document:

‘…by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium. You waive any right to privacy.’

Well now. Isn’t that special.

From the Slashdot forum discussing this topic, I have selected two posts that say most of it:

New Terms in A Nutshell All your base are belong to us

-And-

UUEncode Windows and send it to yourself over AIM.
Let Microsoft and AOL club each other to death :-)

Lovely thought, eh?

In any case, in moment of typical panic reaction to the reminder that AOL is truly the Root of All Evil, I have signed up for a Jabber account and deleted my AIM account. I stll have the Yahoo! account as well, if you don’t want to try Jabber.

Incidentally, I chose Jabber due to it’s open-source nature, and the fact that both gaim and kopete chat clients support it. I can now be reached at thecyberwolfe(at)jabber.org or thecyberwolfe on Ymessenger.

MSN Messenger, of course, is not an option no matter what program I use. I just can’t go there.