14. Distribution of Site Materials, Posted ItemsYou agree not to post, transmit, link to, or otherwise distribute to the Site or site materials, including but not limited to, product lists and program terms.Okay, ignore the incoherent "to" after the "distribute" in 14. The terms purport to disallow links to the site, which seems kind of 1998 to me, and also to ban quotation of the terms of use (assuming that's what "program terms," an otherwise undefined phrase, means--oops). But because it's a website that benefits from people knowing about it, on the front page, it touts ... media that have linked to the site:
...
17. Copyrighted Materials
These Terms of Use and other written, graphic, and pictorial materials on this site are fully protected by U.S. and international copyright laws. Duplication, distribution, or other use of these materials without express written permission of National Book Swap is expressly prohibited. Any reproduction, storage, transmission, or other use of the materials on this site, including, but not limited to these Terms of Use, without the express written permission of National Book Swap will result in substantial civil and criminal liability.
Oh look, there's a Wikipedia entry. A Chronicle of Higher Education blog entry too. There may be a germ of an idea there: possibly the site doesn't want other sites reposting the lists of books available on PaperbackSwap's site, in order to control the data mining possibilities. Not the friendliest approach, but not without a rationale; but these aren't the provisions to accomplish that particular task. And of course, huge amounts of the content on the site are ... thumbnails of book covers, in which the site has no exclusive rights and is unlikely to be able to grant "express written permission" to use. I could go on, but: it is surely possible to write website-friendly and user-unfriendly terms of use that aren't this dumb. (I mean, why not go whole hog and say "and if we send you a C&D that's copyrighted too and you're not allowed to post it!") I sure hope I'm not subject to "criminal liability" for saying so!
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