About our Terms of Service

Hello everybody,

There was an entry posted by @singer last night that raised some serious and legitimate questions – and I want to be sure we address these. Although Singer’s entry was titled about the Privacy Policy, the actual text quoted and in question is part of our Term of Service, which you can read here: https://www.opendiary.com/terms-of-service/.

Before we get to the legalese, I want to make something perfectly clear: Open Diary will never do anything with the content you post, other than what is needed to display it here on Open Diary and make it available to other members (according to your privacy settings), without your permission. Your privacy is very important to us, and we will not share your content with people or companies that you do not want it shared with.

So on to the details:

Although the Privacy Policy changed this week due to new privacy restrictions and rules, the Terms of Service that we have had is the same as we have had since the service started. The section in question is this:

You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).

You agree that this license includes the right for Open Diary to provide, promote, and improve the Services and to make Content submitted to or through the Services available to other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Open Diary for the syndication, broadcast, distribution or publication of such Content on other media and services, subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use.

Such additional uses by Open Diary, or other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Open Diary, may be made with no compensation paid to you with respect to the Content that you submit, post, transmit or otherwise make available through the Services.

We may modify or adapt your Content in order to transmit, display or distribute it over computer networks and in various media and/or make changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to any requirements or limitations of any networks, devices, services or media.

There is an important sentence at the beginning of this, which says “You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services”. This means that anything you post on Open Diary is owned by you, and copyright attributed to you – we do not own the content you submit.

The next part of the section is about how you grant Open Diary license to distribute and display your content worldwide, without royalty, on any media. This is necessary in order for us to operate Open Diary, and simply gives us the ability to display your content on the website, on any future mobile apps, or other technology that we might use. This right of re-display is something you will find as part of the terms for any website or app that you use (where you can post content), it is necessary in order for the service to be able to operate and display your content.

The next part is about our ability to make your content available to other companies. As part of that right to re-display, we have to be able to “modify” or “adapt” your content if needed, in order to display it on other networks. All of that section is very specifically there because it is required for our system to be able to share Public entries (because only Public entries can be shared) to Facebook, Twitter, or other places. When content is shared, it may appear differently or be truncated on those other networks so may appear to be “modified”.

There are a few really important points here that I want to be sure everybody understands:

1. Your diary entries are owned by you, you retain your rights to the content you create.
2. Open Diary will never re-sell your content. We have made this statement multiple times and will continue to make it – your content is yours.
3. We will never re-use your content for anything other than the operations of Open Diary, without first getting your consent. The one exception to this is sharing of public entries – which may happen without your previous permission, if you are posting public entries.
4. Your privacy is extremely important to us – as we have said many times, we never re-sell or re-use any of your data, whether it is the content you write, or other information that you post or share with Open Diary.

The four things above are the core of what I believe is important for Open Diary to survive, and to be different from other online services.

However, I can understand how reading the above terms could make some of our users uncomfortable – so as of tonight, we have added the following language to the Terms of Service.

“With the exception of users sharing Public entries to other online services, Open Diary will never re-use or re-distribute your content to services, companies, or properties outside of Open Diary without your permission. Your content is yours, and Open Diary will not use your content for promotional or any other purposes outside the operation and display of the Open Diary service, without your permission.”

I hope this will help to make you all more comfortable with these terms, and please remember that if you have any questions please let us know here or by contacting Support.

Thanks!