It's common for websites that host user content to have very grabby clauses about what they can do with their uploads. Let's look at fark.com's terms of service:
You retain all ownership rights in your Submissions. However, by submitting the Submissions to Fark.com, you hereby grant Fark.com a non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Submissions in connection with Fark.com and Fark.com's business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of Fark.com (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels/outlets.
If all you're posting is gossip and stray thoughts, you probably don't care. But if your material has commercial value, you might want to think twice before posting it to a site with language like this. For instance, if you post some analysis that you might want to sell to a magazine, Fark can publish it in book or magazine form without paying you a cent.
But they're a website, not a book publisher, right? Wrong. This isn't hypothetical; Fark has published a book using content uploaded by users. They didn't have to pay a cent for it.
According to Backing Winds, Fark once grabbed copyright to submissions outright. They no longer do that.
In 1999, Yahoo gained notoriety by requiring Geocities users to grant a "royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, nonexclusive, and fully sublicensable right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, and display such [user-uploaded] 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." Users weren't even allowed to log in long enough to cancel their accounts without first signing over these rights.
In the face of a massive protest, Yahoo partially relented, though the immediate changes were minor. Its current terms of service, however, are significantly more reasonable:
By submitting Content to Yahoo for inclusion on your Yahoo GeoCities Site, you grant Yahoo the world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish the Content solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting your Yahoo GeoCities Site on Yahoo's Internet properties. This license exists only for as long as you continue to be a Yahoo GeoCities homesteader and shall be terminated at the time your Yahoo GeoCities Site is terminated.
Maybe you don't care what rights your giving to a hosting site, maybe you do. Maybe you even like seeing your words in print and figure no one would pay you for them anyway. But there are two lessons to learn from this: (1) Read the terms. (2) Yes, they really do mean it.
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