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canada.com contains onerous provisions in its Terms and Conditions that should cause all persons to avoid submitting any thing to canada.com directly or indirectly.
Specifically canada.com forces users to surrender any rights whatever over any material they submit, while concurrently and simultaneously forcing users to accept legal liability for anything that might happen as a result of the existence of the content.
This literally means that canada.com could take that cute story about your kids that you uploaded and edit it into a kiddy porn tale because in uploading it you surrender all rights to anything to do with the story. Worse, you could be held civilly liable if the kiddy porn story caused other people damage. You keep the liability but are denied any rights to your own content.
We use the kiddy porn extreme example to underline the seriousness of canada.com’s Terms. But say it wasn’t kiddy porn. Instead it was a review about an automobile mechanic. canada.com edits it up to suite a competing mechanic that advertises with canada.com. The original mechanic takes YOU to court because the edits misrepresent him.
Many web sites and services have matured to restrict their claims to non-exclusive and for the purposes clearly intended by the user. Canada.com not only has not restricted their claims, they go further than the worst by extending their claim even to the “moral rights” that creators normally retain even after selling a copyright.
The practice of compulsory theft of user intellectual property has to be opposed. The legal environment has rapidly become hostile to the public domain with the ever-widening and ever-prolonging of intellectual property rights for corporate entities while at the same time squeezing out the vestiges of intellectual property rights remaining with private individuals.
Go ahead and use canada.com services however you see fit. Just do not submit anything, even an opinion, if you attach any value at all to the submission or the possible future use or misuse of the submission.
You can read the entire terms and conditions but here are the relevant portions:
You acknowledge that:
(a) by posting, e-mailing, transmitting, uploading or otherwise submitting any Submitter Content to any canada.com Sites or Services, you hereby irrevocably grant and assign to canada.com the unlimited right and licence, for the full term of copyright or any extension thereof, to copy, adapt, transmit, communicate, public display and perform, distribute and create compilations and derivative works from such Submitter Content, and to publish, reproduce and otherwise use and exploit the Submitter Content in any manner and in any and all media, whether now known or hereafter devised, throughout the world, without further compensation. canada.com shall be entitled to edit the Submitter Content, and you hereby waive in favour of canada.com and its assigns, all “moral rights” in and to the Submitter Content.4. User Conduct
All information, data, text, software, music (including both the particular performance(s) and the underlying musical composition) sound, photographs, graphics, images, avatars, video, messages, ideas, reviews, opinions, suggestions or other materials on a canada.com Site (“Content”), submitted by a user, whether publicly or privately posted, e-mailed, transmitted, uploaded or otherwise submitted to canada.com, a canada.com Site or the Services (“Submitter Content”) is the sole responsibility of the person from which such Submitter Content originated and any such post, e-mail, transmission, uploading or other submission of such Submitter Content is subject to the Submission Release Terms and Conditions referred to in Section 5 below. In addition to the License, Release and Waiver terms for Music, Photos Content and Submitter Content (as defined in Section 5 below), you also acknowledge and agree that you, and not canada.com, are entirely responsible for all Submitter Content that you post, e-mail, transmit, upload or otherwise submit via canada.com Sites and/or pursuant to the Services.
