This was copied verbatim from http://www.sitepowerup.com/toofar.htm, and
details a considerable risk in dealing with Yahoo and any of it's
properties, such as Geocities, broadcast.com, and others.  The commentary
is not my own.

Big Brother is watching you.  And stealing everything you own.

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During June of 1999, the Terms of Service at all Yahoo properties (such
as GeoCities) were changed to say the following:

8. CONTENT SUBMITTED TO YAHOO

By submitting Content to any Yahoo property, you automatically grant, or
warrant that the owner of such Content has expressly granted, Yahoo the
royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive and fully
sublicensable right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt,
publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform
and display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to
incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now
known or later developed. You acknowledge that Yahoo does not pre-screen
Content, but that Yahoo and its designees shall have the right (but not
the obligation) in their sole discretion to refuse, edit, move or remove
any Content that is publicly available via the Service. Without limiting
the foregoing, Yahoo and its designees shall have the right to remove
any Content that violates the TOS or is otherwise objectionable. You
agree that you must evaluate, and bear all risks associated with, the
use of any Content, including any reliance on the accuracy,
completeness, or usefulness of such Content. In this regard, you
acknowledge that you may not rely on any Content created by Yahoo or
submitted to Yahoo, including without limitation information in Yahoo!
Message Boards, Yahoo! Clubs, and in all other parts of the Service.

(This is a direct quote from the Terms of Service page which you can
find at: Yahoo! Terms of Service)

In short, any content you have on GeoCities or any other of Yahoo's
properties has become the ROYALTY-FREE property of Yahoo, forever. Any
images that you've made, any of your own copyrighted material you've
made available, any pictures you've published, etc. belongs to them and
they can do whatever they want with it, forever, in any medium "or
technology now known or later developed."

I bet you weren't aware that any work you've produced and shown to
others via your GeoCities site now belongs to you AND Yahoo. Further, if
you read closely you see that they also gave themselves the "fully
sublicensable right and license to use" so they can take your property,
sell it to others (giving you nothing), or even license it to your
competitor AND NOT PAY YOU A DIME!

What's worse, you can't even take your content off of GeoCities WITHOUT
AGREEING TO THESE TERMS! If you're there already, they've got your
material now, lock, stock and barrel!

It is time to show these corporate clowns that there is a large, diverse
internet outside of their "properties" and they can shove their various
services into whichever oriface they may fit, now or in the future!

Stop using Yahoo. Boycott them, and all of their properties. This
includes Yahoo.com, GeoCities.com and Broadcast.com. Don't buy products
from merchants at shopping.Yahoo.com and let them know why!

Let Yahoo know that you won't tolerate this! Email
copyright@yahoo-inc.com and demand that they let you remove your content
AND demand that they remove it from their databases and demand that they
won't use it without your express consent.

Move your site to one of GeoCities' competitors such as www.tripod.com,
www.angelfire.com, www.fortunecity.com, or any other you know!

Link to this page from your site (your new site, if you're moving from
GeoCities) and let your visitors know that this issue is important to
you as a webmaster, even if you don't use GeoCities yourself!

If you're a user and you use a site which is located at GeoCities, let
the owner of that site know that he or she has just signed over his or
her entire work to these goons and they should leave the service at
once!

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