Autodesk Inventor

[#1]

Ok...I'm all about server maintenance and improving the service but this TOS gives Autdoesk the right to show/display/or whatever they want to do with any and all files uploaded to the Cloud.  Am I missing something here or is Autodesk pulling the wool over our eyes.  

Terms of Service: Autodesk Cloud and Other Services.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=17752585

AutoDesk Cloud service agreement:

Concern about the provision allowing autodesk to:

“to extract, compile, aggregate, synthesize, use, and otherwise analyze all or any portion of Your Content and information, and to disclose Your Content and information and the results of any such analysis in aggregated form or any other form that does not specifically identify You or the source of Your Content”

2.2      License by You; Disclosure. Autodesk (or its sublicensees) may exercise the license set forth in this Section only for purposes of providing, maintaining, repairing, protecting, organizing or otherwise administering the Service and Service Site in the ordinary course of Autodesk’s (or its designated third parties’) provision of the Service and improving and modifying the Service, including rights to extract, compile, aggregate, synthesize, use, and otherwise analyze all or any portion of Your Content and information, and to disclose Your Content and information and the results of any such analysis in aggregated form or any other form that does not specifically identify You or the source of Your Content or information. Notwithstanding anything in these Terms to the contrary, You hereby grant Autodesk (or warrant that the licensor of such rights has expressly granted) a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, paid-up, worldwide, sublicensable (through multiple tiers) license to store, display, reproduce, modify, use and transmit Your Content, and further waive “moral” rights or other rights with respect to attribution of authorship or integrity of Your Content that You may have under any applicable law and under any legal theory.  In addition, You acknowledge and agree that Autodesk may disclose Your Content to provide the Service to You (including, without limitation, Your election to share Your Content under Sections 3.3 and 3.4), to comply with any legal obligations or governmental or regulatory body request (including subpoenas or court orders) or as part of a legal proceeding involving Autodesk Parties.

[#2]

Hmm...Based on this, you definitely don't want to upload anything you don't want your competition to see. 

[#3]

Store your IP or Proprietary knowledge on someone else's hardware and you've already lost total control over it.

I've questioned this before, what company would ever want to store their IP on Adesk's cloud?

[#4]

All that's missing is the First-Born Son provision.  You might want to cc that to Lifehacker / Gawker; they might enjoy pointing out yet another egregious TOS.  Might also be Twitter-worthy for someone with a goodly-large following in the CAD sphere.

Sadly, I suspect all the CAD-cloud offerings are just as heinous.  Shakespeare probably had the right idea about lawyers.

[#5]

The TOS for AutoCAD WS says the same thing, so don't put any "secrets" there either.

[#6]

Wow, what a joke. Autodesk Cloud & WS... you are dead to me. Thanks for nothing AD. I thougth all those useful tools on my iPad and iPhone were so helpful but whatever, guess I'm back to toting my laptop everywhere.

This is yet another reason why cloud computing will NEVER be implemented at my office.

I should probably read these things instead of just clicking "I Agree".

[#7]

I suppose everyone could encrypt everything they put in the Autodesk cloud - until such tools are outlawed by the national security organs as instruments of terrorism.  What a wonderful world: having to hide your data from both the government and the corporations - or is separating them now redundant?

[#8]

Makes me wonder about the CER replies I get, that request I send them the dataset in use when Inventor crashed.  Do they end up floating around the Internet too?

[#9]

---

bstewart wrote:

Makes me wonder about the CER replies I get, that request I send them the dataset in use when Inventor crashed.  Do they end up floating around the Internet too?

---

No..they shouldn't.. They will sign an NDA if you want them to.. But they just use that stuff for internal testing,etc..

[#10]

We've had a couple of CER's come back this week, with the usual "form-letter-style" request, to send a copy of the dataset to an Autodesk developer in Shanghai, China.

This is not going to happen.