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Not Using Zoom

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Re: Not Using Zoom

#111

The indemnification for IP is a standard term that exists in all SaaS terms. What it's saying is "if you upload copyrighted/infringing material to our service and someone sues us because of it, you have to pay our legal costs since we had nothing to do with it". This is a pretty reasonable thing, you're the one who uploaded the material, you're responsible for it, especially since zoom isn't checking/filtering what y…

I don't think it's reasonable that a SaaS should be able to train their AI on anything that is uploaded (if you're paying for the service). In fact, I don't think it's reasonable that they should even have access to view what you're uploading and sharing in private meetings. If neither of those were true, then they wouldn't have to worry about IP infringement.

> In fact, I don't think it's reasonable that they should even have access to view what you're uploading and sharing in private meetings.

There may be a setting you can set in the application to disable this. I don't know, I don't use Zoom.

But in any case, I think you hit the nail on the head. Just from a plain English perspective:

10.1 says that content you (as host or participant) upload to Zoom, may be used by Zoom to provide derivative information. An example listed is transcripts. Both the information you upload, and the information Zoom provides, is "Customer Content". Customer Content is your responsibility.

10.3 and 10.4 covers a wide variety of purposes for which Zoom can use the Customer Content.

10.5 says that Zoom will reasonably protect Customer Content from unauthorized disclosure, etc., but that it has no other obligations with respect to Customer Content. In particular, it can share the Customer Content with their "consultants,contractors, service providers, subprocessors, and other Zoom-authorized third parties accessing, using, collecting, maintaining, processing, storing, and transmitting Customer Content on Zoom’s or your (or your End Users’) behalf in connection with the Services or Software".

17.1, the confidentiality clause, says that Customer Content is not confidential information. That suggest the obligations of confidentiality, such as disclosing to third parties only with a confidentiality agreement in place, do not apply.

So if I'm reading this right, Zoom can disclose your meeting transcripts [edit: I meant audio of your meeting] to a third party, without an obligation of confidence between Zoom and that third party, so long as it is for the purposes of providing you the transcript feature.

Which is really strange, to say the least. At minimum I would expect Zoom to treat Customer Content as confidential.

Wish a lawyer could read this and give us (free) insight.

Re: Not Using Zoom

#112

I understand that people are (rightfully) upset by these terms. This is the first post I've seen saying they're rejecting Zoom calls, but I've seen plenty of comments on HN over the last few days on this topic saying roughly the same. My question is: what are you doing for work where you can just decline any invitation that comes from a specific service? That's not realistic at all for most people. Is there a solutio…

If this gets big, most companies won't like the idea of their internal company calls being used to train AI, and they will switch off ASAP.

Despite the language, I have a very hard time believing that Zoom is actually trying to train a generative AI on private video calls. If I had to guess this is there so that they can train adjacent services such as malware scanners for shared files or possibly their captioning service using small snippets of audio.

I'd still prefer it if they had far tighter language and clarity on how they use user data, but the tech crowd feels like it's off in conspiracy land.

If there is any actual evidence that they are using large amounts of private call data to train a generative AI then I'd really like to see that.

Re: Not Using Zoom

#114
post #109
post #34

>Be indemnified by me if it turns out someone else owns the IP or has their rights infringed (for example to confidential materials everyone on the call is entitled to review). IANAL but that's not quite what the terms say. >25. INDEMNIFICATION >To the extent not prohibited by applicable Law, you agree to indemnify, defend, and hold Zoom and its affiliates and each of our licensors and suppliers (“Indemnified Parties…

> arising out of or related to > your or your End User’s infringement or violation of any Proprietary Rights or other right of any person or entity

If you're authorized to access the data, it's not infringement. Again, this is if you're using zoom to stream Disney movies or whatever, and Disney decides to sue you and zoom. If you're screensharing confidential company documents you're authorized to view, this will certainly not apply to you. If for whatever reason your company is getting you to screenshare third party documents that you're not authorized to view (eg. confidential documents from a competitor), you should really reconsider who you're working for.

Re: Not Using Zoom

#115

I came directly to the comments to recommend Jitsi instead. Glad the author made the same early in the article.

Has anyone tried Jitsi versus BigBlueButton?

I'm using both and they are very similar. The free jitsi service shouldn't be really used in a comparison as self hosted works miles better (at least in my experience).

Re: Not Using Zoom

#116

Hi there, I'm the COO of Zoom. We currently do not use audio, video or chat content to train AI models and we would not do so without customer consent. Please see our blog https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/

What you said:

> We do not use audio, video or chat content to train AI models

What your linked article says:

> When you choose to enable Zoom IQ … you will also be presented with a transparent consent process for training our AI models using your customer content.

Consent or not, these two statements seem to be at odds with each other?

There isn’t room for such ambiguity in this discussion. Details really matter here.

This community has a long memory about previous Zoom security issues and misleading statements (eg about encryption) - so it’s worth understanding that the level of scrutiny being given to this latest topic is likely elevated as a result. (In other words, I think Zoom has some extra work to do to rebuild trust among many of us here).

Re: Not Using Zoom

#117

The indemnification for IP is a standard term that exists in all SaaS terms. What it's saying is "if you upload copyrighted/infringing material to our service and someone sues us because of it, you have to pay our legal costs since we had nothing to do with it". This is a pretty reasonable thing, you're the one who uploaded the material, you're responsible for it, especially since zoom isn't checking/filtering what y…

Yep, and also terms are necessary that in so many words allow the SaaS provider to read, process, copy, share, store, redistribute, etc. all your content. This is so they can provide their services, which are basically sharing video, audio, and content amongst the meeting participants, providing meeting recordings, transcriptions, etc.

Re: Not Using Zoom

#118

The indemnification for IP is a standard term that exists in all SaaS terms. What it's saying is "if you upload copyrighted/infringing material to our service and someone sues us because of it, you have to pay our legal costs since we had nothing to do with it". This is a pretty reasonable thing, you're the one who uploaded the material, you're responsible for it, especially since zoom isn't checking/filtering what y…

> This is a pretty reasonable thing, you're the one who uploaded the material, you're responsible for it

Absolute BS, this isn't youtube, call it what it is... eavesdropping on two way communication for personal gain. They are misusing IP law to cover their arses for stealing information that is legal to share between the people in the call but not legal for them to steal.

Every business should be fleeing from Zoom right now. All your internal comms are going to be exposed to their LLM... if you have trade secrets discussed over zoom calls, you should assume they can be extracted by others with access to the LLM.

Re: Not Using Zoom

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use it at work (20k plus employees) since before the pandemic and it has been awesome.

From the context I'm not entirely sure what "it"is. Zoom? Jitsi? Something else...

From the article, getting off Zoom due to dodgy T&C changes, to something like Jitsi.
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