Monday, January 29, 2007

Revolution Health: an onerous linking policy

If you sign up to try Revolution Health (AOL Case’s project), including it’s personal healthcare record (PHR), you are legally committing yourself to obey their linking policy. Emphases mine:

Terms of use and service - Revolution Health

... 4. Linking To This Website

Unless you have a written agreement with us that specifies how you may link to the Site, following are the rules for adding a link to the Site from your website:

* The link must be a text-only link clearly marked "www.revolutionhealth.com"
* The link must "point" to www.revolutionhealth.com and not to other pages within the Site
* The appearance, position and other aspects of the link may not be such as to damage or dilute the goodwill associated with Revolution Health good name and trademarks
* The appearance, position and other aspects of the link may not create the false impression that an entity is associated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Revolution Health
* The link, when activated by a user, must display the Site full-screen and not within a "frame" on the linking website and linking may not trigger any interstitial or pop-up or pop-under windows
* The link may not be used in connection with or appear on a website that a reasonable person might consider offensive, obscene, defamatory or otherwise malicious
* We reserve the right to revoke consent to the link at any time in our sole discretion. If we revoke such consent, you agree to immediately remove and disable any and all of your links to the Site ...

I wonder how standard such a linking policy is, I think the middle four requirements are fine but the bolded ones, especially the last are onerous. It doesn’t mean you can’t say anything nasty about them of course, you just have to remove the link on their request.

The contract required to establish a "My" account is long and complex. A lawyer would tell you not to sign without an expensive legal evaluation ...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is pretty standard language.