When AOL got called out on its Terms of Service giving it ownership of your private instant messages and requiring you to waive your privacy rights, it went into spin mode. It gave press interviews saying that it didn't intend to use the agreement that it exacted from its users to abuse their privacy, and said that besides, Microsoft's terms of service were just as bad or worse (hardly a ringing endorsement!).
Now, though, AOL has done the right and substantive thing in response: it has rewritten its terms of service so that they clearly distinguish between the messages you post to public areas and the private messages you send to your friends. This is absolutely the way that AOL should be handling this, and they deserve to be congratulated for it.
(Thanks, Andrew!)
