Much of this post is arecontextualization of a post I did on the IDC listserv about the fact that we frequently do NOT read Terms of Service (TOS) and End User License Agreements (EULAs) when using social media, or technology in general. If one looks closely, many popular sites claim ownership of all information put on them (myspace does this, or very close), and Second Life takes no liability for the reliability of its software, service, possible monitoring of user activity, or the veracity of its core currency (read the ToS).

Given this, I am somehow surprised that people are in any way appalled regarding the transparency of their information. Or, for that matter, the security of it.

Consider the record in the era of the hypercapitalist social. Blogs, social
nets, community hosts are all goldmines for advertisers (the chief economy [besides porn and sex toys;) ] on the Net. Secondly, the reliance on ad capital as hosting revenues went down created a culture in which the maintenance of any record is solely dependant on its economic viability.

From this, the user innocently clicks "OK" on the TOS/EULA without ever
looking at it. And, if a corporate buyout occurs, the TOS/EULA can change to represent the policy of the host corporation. Why should anyone be
surprised that their blogs, data, demographic info could be up for bid? In the information economy where sites like MySpace explicitly state that any
information used on site can be used by NewsCorp for whatever purpose, is it a surprise when acquisitions take place and the data, is, in fact, used?

I wonder whether net culture might be entering a moment of existential
hysteresis in which it is straining to keep believing the utopian 90's
paradigm of the "free Internet" (use whatever interpretation you like)
shifting from Whole Earth to SnowCrash. I remember when a young woman came up to me in '97 at the Cleveland Contemporary, angered that I had criticised the Net as a potential site for more corporate abuse, stating that the Net was the "last grass-roots place where people can really make a difference", mirroring the MCI telecomm ad fromt he Super Bowl with the same message.

Secondly, I once knew a data archivist who was consulting to AT&T in the
90's who was in negotiations with them to try to allow migration of "all"
records, including "gray" ones, and trying to institute limits on mining and
remarketing user data. I don't know abotu the latter, but I do know that
because of "financial" issues, a lot of legacy information was lost.

From this, and from other research, our data, all of it, is subject to sale
or termination, and to changing user agreements without notice. Basically, if a user agrees to the company's terms, there isn't much one can do. Compounding this, the changes to Terms of Service (TOS) are wholly up to the company, and there is little recourse afforded the user.

A faint analogy reflects the concerns people have had with Second Life. On one hand, user profiles (a pay function) were recently deleted without
recourse, eliminating hundreds of thousands of user fees in an instant. In
addition, the TOS/EULA states that Linden Labs makes no apologies for bugs, downtime, eavesdropping, or experience.

But then, when prospective users ask me whether I should let the students
use tech like Second Life, when there is all this "sex and violence", I
counter that they should not use the Internet for the same reason. My
argument is that what we are seeing is the flowering of Web 2.0. It was
sold as an empowering technology, but what many of us know full well is that all that user data is intellectual property, and a valuable resource for the conglomerates. In addition, many are just now realizing that the abuses of power regarding IP permissions may not be restricted to logos and Metallica songs.

And, in regards to data persistence/security, it will exist as long as it benefits the institution's enlightened self interest ( i.e. economic
viability of the archive, if not for profitability, for community goodwill/
PR).

My viewpoint may be a little extreme, but probably not by much. We want to believe in the Net, we want to believe that no one is mining our Facebook demographic stats, but I feel this is a little idealistic. Granted, perhaps my Gibsonian Zaibatsu/Sprawl scenario may be exaggerated, but with consolidation, perhaps not.