Now, you can decide for yourself whose agenda you’d like to be skeptical of – but let’s at least look at the facts behind the game of Litigious Chicken that you are playing via your membership in and contributions to Garmin’s ActiveCaptain.Īs you can see in this particular SN post of mine, in 2012 pre-Garmin AC claimed ownership of ALL the IP. …it appears to be fertile ground for those with an agenda to pull pieces out of context to push their agenda. And it certainly doesn’t tell the whole story by any means…which makes this part of his statement above very telling… So, what was posted above by Jeff is only one paragraph of the GarminAC TOS. You are…now potentially from multiple sources. Did the CG, or other source, expressly grant to YOU – and therefore Garmin – these rights? If not, who is on the hook? But what if you come across a warning about a hazard somewhere online (via the CG or some other source) and you put that wording into that marker on AC (which goes on a lot actually)?
GARMIN HOMEPORT ACTIVECAPTAIN FOR FREE
Now, being that GarminAC is a site that uses crowdsourcing to harvest its license-able data essentially for free – you might automatically assume that it’s always YOUR data you’re putting in. However, what is NOT in that snippet that, in the case of boating, is FAR more important – is the LIABILITY surrounding this submission information you own and are broadcasting (and warranting) to the entire boating world through Garmin.įor example, the first sniff of the liability issue is this part of that same paragraph: “By submitting material to any Site, you automatically grant, or warrant that the owner of such material has expressly granted…” You “own” it, yes – but they can do anything they want with it for their own purposes and profit – forever. So here, we’re talking about, as Jeff points out, copyright – ownership. The part of the TOS that Jeff quoted above pertains only to you granting Garmin a “royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license” to the info you put into AC.
I’m confident you’re smart enough to understand it. Here’s the deal…it’s really NOT that complicated, unless one needs it to seem that way for business reasons.
After all, he’s got the back of the boating community, right? So you should just leave it to him and AC. It’s a complex topic and doesn’t lend itself to shoot-from-the-hip assumptions.Įssentially, it’s a “complex topic” that you, the average sailor, couldn’t possibly comprehend.
GARMIN HOMEPORT ACTIVECAPTAIN FULL
So any discussion of what “the man” is trying to do really needs a full understanding of the various laws. Here was his first salvo regarding your liability under his TOS:Īs I understand it (and I’m the author of the original TOS prior to Garmin’s changes), users own the copyright to their submissions. …pops up under the sockpuppet name “Red Head” and starts spouting outlandish BS about “His Precious”.Īnd, as usual, I was obligated to smack his grubby little hand to protect the sailing masses (that is before he got perma-banned yet again from this same forum – third time under various usernames). That was like saying “Beetlejuice” three times…īecause immediately, my old stalky pal and AC’s biggest superstar Jeff Smeagol (I think that’s his name but I could be wrong)… This means AC gets to own the data free and clear, but YOU get sued for that data if someone comes to trouble with it. AC changed its TOS terms a few years ago to put the liability for incorrect/unverified information on the boater – not AC (who claimed to “verify” that very data). What’s more important than ownership of the info/data (which has always been part of the AC TOS) – is LIABILITY. A friend there talked about Garmin’s post-acquisition reworking of the also lame sailing guide, ActiveCaptain, and I mentioned this issue of liability… This conversation started back when I was still on the sadly lame Chesapeake-area sailing forum, Sailnet. And YOU’LL be legally liable for it…not Garmin. That picture above of the exploding boat above could very well happen. Why?īecause you are taking on a virtually unprecedented amount of liability in doing so.įor example, if you were the one that placed one of these anchorage markers on the north side of Vieques several years ago…
The bottom line is that you should be extremely careful what information (“User Submissions”) you share on that platform. Are you a member of Garmin’s ActiveCaptain? Or are you considering becoming one? If so, have you actually read the new Terms of Use you must to agree to?
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