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2 hours ago
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Users of the Academia.edu service are cancelling their subscriptions in response to perceived overreach by the firm in its recent update to its terms of service.
A part of Academia.edu’s new user agreement.
Catching users’ attention was a new passage in the “License granted by Member” section of the terms, which says:
By creating an Account with Academia.edu, you grant us a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license, permission, and consent for Academia.edu to use your Member Content and your personal information (including, but not limited to, your name, voice, signature, photograph, likeness, city, institutional affiliations, citations, mentions, publications, and areas of interest) in any manner, including for the purpose of advertising, selling, or soliciting the use or purchase of Academia.edu’s Services.
The terms also continue to give Academia.edu broad leeway when it comes to making use of any writing you upload to it:
By making any Member Content available through the Site or Services, you hereby grant to Academia.edu a worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free, non-exclusive, transferable license to exercise any and all rights under copyright, in any medium, and to authorize others to do the same, in connection with operating and providing the Services and Content to you and to other Members, including the generation and hosting of Output and the use of AI to generate adaptations and other derivative works of Member Content, provided that the Member Content is not sold to a third party for a profit… You agree that Academia.edu may analyze, transform, and create derivative works from Member Content in connection with providing and improving its Services.
Many academics list their Academia.edu page as their personal websites. If you work in philosophy, and haven’t done so already, you may wish to consider creating a page at PhilPeople (its terms of use are here).
(Thanks to several readers for bringing this to my attention.)
UPDATE: In a comment below, Academia.edu’s owner, Richard Price, makes an announcement about the changes to its terms of service:
Today we removed reference to voice, likeness etc, and refined that paragraph to the following:
“By creating an Account with Academia.edu, you grant us a worldwide, revocable, non-exclusive transferable license to display your profile information (e.g., your name, city, institutional affiliations, and areas of interest) to other Academia.edu accountholders, including in connection with promoting Academia.edu’s services and features. It does not give Academia.edu any ownership rights in your profile information, which remains yours.”
Read the rest of the update here.
