Despite the fact that Andy Beal thought it was a pain to sign up for the new Jubii service (it seriously is), I thought I would give it a try and give some feedback – 10GB of free storage could be useful, depending on usage restrictions.
The NY Times piece didn’t really give me any indication as to whether this service was just intended to be some kind of integrated Myspace, or dare I say it, something useful…
Initial observations
US Only? – Before I had got to the terms and conditions, I discovered a drop down box allowing me to select my country – the only option was US. I also had to enter my area code – 99999 seemed very suitable.
Terms of Service – Insanely difficult to read – the javascript popup box doesn’t respond to keyboard or mouse-wheel input, so I had to resort to dragging the scrollbar. The window size for reading a legal document was just not suitable. Fortunately they offer a downloadable PDF.
Terms Of Service Are Important
I have a pro account on Flickr, but their terms of service prevent use for commercial purpose, and especially use for hosting web graphics. I know lots of people break this rule, but that doesn’t mean it is a good thing to base your business around.
You could just pay for hosting images and other multimedia on Amazon S3, but that isn’t always suitable and it can be slow. The charges however are a lot lower than from most hosting companies.
Converting the PDF
Whilst the PDF was a useful way to read the terms of service, it was proving difficult to copy and paste text for this overview. There is an easy way around that, just send the PDF to myself as an attachment in GMAIL, to get a “view as HTML” option.
Jubii Terms of Service
4. Purpose.
The purpose of our Website is to offer users a variety of possibilities for publishing (e.g.
private homepages, weblogs, linklists, dating services, discussion forums, upload services) and
exchanging (e.g. via email, chat file sharing) information, data, data banks, texts, links,
software, music, sounds, photos, graphics, videos, news or other material (“Contentâ€).
Content on the Website is offered for your personal (noncommercial) use and may not be used,
copied, reproduced, distributed, transmitted, broadcast, displayed, sold, licensed or otherwise
exploited except with the prior written consent of Jubii.
Based on this clause, Jubii is next to useless for anyone who has any kind of monetization on their blog. Are they just after the MySpace crowd?
5. Publication of Content/Grant of Rights.
By submitting and contributing Content for publication within the Jubii Service, you
grant Jubii an unlimited, world-wide, non-exclusive license free of charge, including the right
to grant sublicenses, to use, reproduce, publish, display, copy, transmit, store, disseminate,
translate, reformat and make publicly available such Content or prepare derivative works or
integrate the Content into compilations or to distribute the Content and extracts of the
Content and to perform and display the foregoing in connection with the business of Jubii
including with or within advertising as determined by Jubii. This license includes without
limitation the right to make the Content and extracts of the Content accessible as stated in the
preceding sentence via mobile devices, whether now known or hereafter devised, and the right
to adapt the Content to any data format. You authorize the use of the Content which you
place on the Website for the purpose of publishing, displaying and advertising of the Content
with or within Jubii Service, any link to the Website or search function associated with the
Jubii Service or the Website. You agree that Jubii does not guarantee any confidentiality with
respect to Content that is submitted and contributed to the Website.
This is actually fairly standard cover-your-ass stuff, but it effectively allows them to make derivative works and sub license them to others anyway they choose.
6. Copyrights/Privacy/Intellectual Property Rights.
You represent and warrant to us that you have not, and will not (nor authorize any
person using your password), publish any Content that infringes the copyrights,
patents, trademarks, trade secrets or other intellectual property rights (the
“Intellectual Property Rightsâ€) of any person. You further represent and warrant
to us that the addition of advertising to any of your Content (or to Content added
under your password) will not violate the Intellectual Property Rights of any
person.
They are basically ruling out any material published under a Creative Commons License.
7. Rules.
You agree to the following:
(a)
The information which you have submitted is accurate, correct and complete. You
will not provide to us or post on our Website any information that is not correct,
such as an incorrect name, address, email address or any other incorrect
information whether with respect to you or any other person.
Oops I have given fake address details, so I can’t exactly test their service any further – the fact that I couldn’t give real details wouldn’t help me.
(b)
You will not use our Website, or any of the Content on the Website, for any
commercial or professional purposes, or for any other purpose involving solicitation
in any way to sell merchandise, goods, services, real estate or any product. You
may not post any links or telephone numbers for commercial or professional
services.
Even more hyper-restrictive – whatever you do, don’t go posting your favorite recipes, as that might be a precursor to a thriving online business.
You agree not to remove or block any copyright notices, ads or references or links
to the Jubii Service or elsewhere that we place on or near your Content.
So you are not allowed any privacy whatsoever when using the service, and have to turn off all your anti-spyware tools and services so Jubii can serve their adverts.
Limitations on Users.
(a) Users of the Jubii Service will be subject to reasonable limitations on the amount
of storage capacity which we offer and we reserve the right to change or reduce
the amount of storage capacity in our sole discretion from time to time without
advance notice.
So the 10GB storage is just a promotional gimmick, and they can reduce it without notice at some time in the future.
The Missing Security Code
Take a look:-
I am assuming this is a new security method, the “Invisible Captcha”
It is difficult for blind people to fill in a captcha, and use of a captcha that causes people with disabilities problems is certainly frowned upon, and possibly illegal in some countries (IANAL).
Obviously the best way to handle such an issue is to level the playing field, and make the captcha invisible for everyone.
Conclusion
I am prevented seeing anything inside the service, maybe it is not really live yet? I will write a review sometime in the future, assuming they modify the terms of service to allow a little more freedom.
Jubii doesn’t have a front page that makes it attractive to young users, and I believe it is almost impossible to use it for anything else that is useful, at least for my audience.
With all the features I have read about, they could make it extremely useful, we will see what happens.
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