Site's Terms of Use/Privacy Policy...?

[A.M.D.A.]

#1.

A healthy community has room for and encourages participation from everyone, regardless of their age, background or level of expertise

http://www.consumerreview.com/channe...ain/terms.html
http://www.consumerreview.com/channe...n/privacy.html

Children Under 13
ConsumerREVIEW.com's Web site is not designed for children under 13. If we discover that you are under 13 and have registered with us, we will delete your registration.

How come the contradiction?

#2.

License Grant
By contributing or submitting product reviews, message board postings, product photographs, or any other Content, you automatically grant (or warrant that the owner of such rights has expressly granted) us an irrevocable, royalty-free, transferable and worldwide right and license to use, copy, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from and sell and distribute such materials or incorporate such materials into any form, medium or technology without compensation to you. In addition, you warrant that all so-called moral rights in those materials have been waived. None of the materials shall be subject to any obligation of confidence on the part of ConsumerREVIEW.com.

http://www.consumerreview.com/channe...n/privacy.html

What exactly does this mean? If I post photos in the forums or upload to the gallery - am I giving away copyrights? Any clarification would be greatly appreciated.

[Photo-John]

Just a quick answer, without my taking a closer look. PhotographyREVIEW.com is supposed to have it's own terms of use statement. But corporate makes changes and deletes it. They don't mean to. They just don't know any better. I will get it fixed. The bit about the age requirement is something I have never seen and wasn't aware of. I don't know how long it's been in there. But I will check it out.

[brmill26]

You'll find the Children Under 13 exemption on almost any website. This is why: The Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/busi...eft/bus45.shtm As you can see, that's an unbelievably lengthy and complex set of rules. Rather than risk running afoul of them and breaking the law, many websites simply state in their user agreements that children under 13 are not allowed to join. Of course that doesn't stop them from joining; it simply shifts the wrong doing from the website to the individual child. That limits the site's liability on that issue.

The copyright release is your typical sweeping grant of extensive rights. Websites require a large grant of rights to be able to host and share photos and run a business practically. So, most attorneys, not familiar with the concerns of professional photographers, simply write a sweeping grant of rights to the site. At any honest, legitimate site, it's not because they're trying to steal your images; they just don't want to be sued. Writing a more specific release would require a likely unversed lawyer to do some fairly specific research, which is almost always something he doesn't want to do and the client website doesn't want to pay for. Thus, you get the boilerplate release-it-all.

[Photo-John]

All correct. We do have a separate terms of use clause for PhotographyREVIEW.com, though. We've had it since the site launched. You can't have a serious photography site without showing some extra respect towards photo usage. But like I said, periodically, someone makes changes to the ConsumerREVIEW.com site and we lose that clause. It's not because anyone wants to take advantage. It's just that I'm the only one here who really knows or cares. I'll get it fixed.

[A.M.D.A.]

Thanks very much for your replies, I understand.