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!

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May 29, 2018

Thanks for the clarification 🙂

May 29, 2018

Awesome. Thank you!

May 29, 2018

I didn’t really need the clarification, but it’s great that you took the time to provide it!

May 29, 2018

Thank you. Makes me feel better.

May 29, 2018

Thank you for the clarification. It certainly makes sense.

May 29, 2018

Bravo for being willing to further explain the terms of service.  Thanks.

May 29, 2018

Thank you for the clarification.

May 29, 2018

Thank you so much for taking the time to clarify, this is much appreciated.

May 29, 2018

Does that mean you won’t sell our information to advertisers?. FB algorithms were erroneous and aggravating and an unwanted invasion of privacy.

May 29, 2018

@byfaithalone yes that is correct, we never sell information about you to advertisers or anybody else.

May 30, 2018

I was wondering how I could get some readers here to find me at facebook.com and become my friend there?  Or is this not allowed?

May 30, 2018

@jaythesmartone you would have to share your Facebook name or URL with them – but please do that privately (in a private note). Thanks!

May 30, 2018

okay thanks…I thought that.

June 1, 2018

Thanks!

June 3, 2018

Thank you.

June 5, 2018

I just read it, but it’s nice to have it explained.

June 10, 2018

Seems fair enough.

I hate to be a stickler, but are we going to get some more circles added? It feel like a millennium ago when we talked about adding an Atheism circle and bringing back Politics.

June 11, 2018

@peter_24601 yes new Circles to come, thanks for the reminder 🙂

June 11, 2018

@thediarymaster Thanks, I think that by creating an Atheism circle in addition to one dedicated to Spirituality, we can avoid conflict by giving each side a place to post rather one place to clash. Cheers,

June 14, 2018

Thanks for taking the time to clarify. 🙂

August 10, 2018

As always, great news and totally expected!! 🙂 Thanks

BTW: Those 2 drafts, just turned up as regular posted entries, lol. I DID send ticket this a.m. and got an email they’d look into it. I wonder where the entries had gone? lol. I have this pesky analytical type mind, and detail oriented on top of it!! T.Y for everything and Kudos!! 🙂

August 10, 2018

@butterfly4him thank you! I hope the team can figure it out 🙂

August 11, 2018

@thediarymaster : it’s all good!! T y 🤗

I’m fairly plugged into (no pun intended) issues re: online polices and try to educate myself on changes as much as possible.  Every platform on which I participate issued updated privacy policies at the same as OD so I researched the issue, thus wasn’t at all concerned about OD but great idea to post this, especially in light of the post by @singer.  If people only knew what less reputable companies are doing.

September 7, 2018

@czari it’s great that you are educated on this, because it is super-important. You are right that there are a lot of online companies that are doing a lot of bad things with personal data. One of the things I am committed to is that Open Diary will not be that way!