I am going to follow this up tomorrow, but I had to post something now. I just read this post over at Contentious, Why You Need to Quit Using AOL IM … holy shit if this is true! What does it say? Well, in a nutshell, AOL owns everything you type in any AIM session … they can do whatever they want with it.

We use AIM for nearly everything at IST and I use it so much with all my sponsors … makes me sick! Certainly makes me want to use the phone a little more to discuss sensitive issues … let alone all the file transfers we do over the AIM network. The piece doesn’t mention iChat AV — its what I use. I do know Apple uses the AOL infrastructure, but I’m not sure if the terms of service are any different. Time to read the fine print!

If you’ve seen this and know more, please post a comment. I just sent a note to our copyright/legal expert in our School for him to look at it as well. More tomorrow …

Update: Just read this post over at Corante’s Copyfight blog … short, but has a few good pointers.