A bunch of companies are flocking over to the Twitterverse now that they are finally understanding it is a quick and viable way to reach out and keep connected with customers. Wal-mart has multiple Twitter accounts and has organized a little place of their own to organize all the tweets over at walmartstores.com/twitter. Come to find out that visiting walmart.com/twitter means you adhere to their rules and some of them are quite ridiculous.
The TOS goes over the basic legalities such as “whatever is expressed here is not our fault…” and what have you. The most interesting aspect of the TOS though was the licensing. It turns out you aren’t allowed to use the tweets on walmart.com/twitter unless they are for personal use. Here, I will copy and paste for your own convenience.
Your compliance with the Terms provides a limited, terminable license regarding access to and use of the Site Contents, for non- commercial purposes, in accordance with these Terms.
In addition to compliance with the other provisions of these Terms, you agree:
(a) Not to alter any Site Content without Wal-Mart’s express, written permission or use any Site Content in a manner specifically prohibited by, or not expressly authorized by, these Terms;
(b) To use the Site Contents for your own informational purposes only. For example, unless expressly authorized by Wal-Mart, you agree not to place any Site Contents on a network and will not use any Site Contents to advertise or otherwise promote any products, services or political positions;
(c) Not to copy, distribute, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, modify, disclose or otherwise use any Site Code without the express written permission of Wal-Mart; In addition, you agree not to combine or associate the Content or excerpt with any other material, e.g., as part of a derivative work, collective work or compilation;
(d) Wal-Mart may, solely in its own discretion and without advance notice, revoke the limited license regarding all of the Site Contents or with respect to specific images, texts, other Site features or Site Code. If requested by Wal-Mart, you agree to cease using and/or to destroy any copies of the subject Content or Code;
(e) Unless expressly permitted in writing from Wal-Mart, you will not frame, link, associate with advertisements (e.g., pop-ups) or commercially exploit the Site, Site Contents or the Site Code; and
(f) You are responsible for ensuring that other parties that have access to the Site, Site Content or the Site Code through your system or equipment, or through your actions or inactions, agree to and comply with these the Terms.
This Site and all its Contents are provided solely for your personal, non-commercial use. In addition to Wal-Mart’s other rights, the compilation (meaning the collection, arrangement, and assembly) of all Content on this Site is the exclusive property of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc and is also protected by U.S. and international copyright laws. © 2008 Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Access and use of this Site by you does not grant to you any license except as may be expressly set forth in these Terms. All rights not expressly granted to you by these Terms are reserved by Wal-Mart, its owner(s), affiliated entities or its licensors.
So basically what they are saying is if you use the site content (which includes the tweets) for any purpose other than personal than you can’t use the data. The funny thing about this is that Wal-mart does not own this data, Twitter does. Making these restrictions moot. I could simply go directly to the Wal-mart Twitter accounts and use the data as I please.
Nice shot Wal-mart. But this is the web and this is Twitter. You control nothing.
