Dear PayPal – you really blew it this time!

PayPal recently announced that, beginning on July 1, there would be a new Terms of Service going into effect. This is because baby bird is finally leaving the nest and its parent company eBay. They will be entirely separate companies.

New Terms of Service. Yawn, right?

Well, let’s start with the fact that this Terms of Service is 60 pages long! Who needs 60-page Terms of Service? You know at the get-go that there has to be a lot of stuff buried in there that can’t be good for the consumer.

One of those things can be found on page 53 – a point long past which narcoleptics fell asleep with their finger on the “Agree” button:

That’s right. By agreeing, PayPal gets forever rights to your intellectual property posted and tied to a PayPal account. To use if they want, when they want and how they want. You have no say in the matter and (per the paragraph that follows) and you will not receive any compensation or royalties. Oh. And they can resell any or all of it to anyone they want.

And eBay, the separate company? They have the identical language in their Terms of Service, which already went into effect!

Content

When providing us with content or causing content to be posted using our Services, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable (through multiple tiers) right to exercise any and all copyright, publicity, trademark and database rights and other intellectual property rights you have in the content, in any media known now or developed in the future. Further, to the fullest extent permitted under applicable law, you waive your moral rights and promise not to assert such rights or any other intellectual property or publicity rights against us, our sublicensees, or our assignees.

You represent and warrant that none of the following infringe any rights mentioned in the preceding paragraph: your provision of content to us, your causing content to be posted using the Services, and use of any such content (including of works derived from it) by us, our users, or others in contract with us that is done in connection with the Services and in compliance with this User Agreement.

We’ll be making some changes. Meanwhile, keep your eyes peeled before hitting that “Agree” button!

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UPDATE (May 27): Just in case you think we’re being paranoid, check out this article. Some people are turning others’ posts into “art” and selling them for $90,000: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2015/05/25/a-reminder-that-your-instagram-photos-arent-really-yours-someone-else-can-sell-them-for-90000/?postshare=9371432648650700