As the direct outgrowth of recent furor about AOL privacy policies, AOL has issued a clarification:

[from Terms of Service]

AIM Home > Terms of Service

To: AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) Users

From: America Online

Re: Rumors about Changes to the AIM Terms of Service and Your Privacy on AIM

A number of online media outlets and blogs have recently written about rumors that AOL has changed the AIM Terms of Service (TOS) to weaken the privacy of AIM users. We want to assure you that those rumors are totally false.

There was no recent change to the policy, and AOL does not read private user-to-user communication on the AIM network (which is fully explained in the AIM Privacy Policy).

As the policy says, "AOL does not read your private online communications when you use any of the communication tools offered as AIM Products."

Despite that statement, language in a different section of the AIM Terms of Service caused some confusion about the overall policy. The other section is called "Content You Post" and, as the name indicates, it applies to content a user might choose to post in a public area of the AIM service, such as a chat room or online message board. It does not apply to private user-to-user communications over AIM.

The "Content You Post" section explained that content posted in a public area of the AIM service also might be used by AOL for other purposes. One example of this is when AIM posts a photo submitted by a user for the "Rate-a-Buddy" feature so other AIM users can vote on it. Another might be taking an excerpt from a message board posting on a current news issue and highlighting it in news coverage of that issue.

A similar clause is a standard part of almost all user agreements for online publishers, including news outlets, portals, and blogging sites. The language simply lets the user know that content they post in a public area can be seen by other users and can be used by the owner of the site for other purposes.

Nonetheless, as some users were confused by the meaning of this section, we have clarified it by adding language that makes clear that it only refers to content posted in public areas of AIM and not to private user-to-user communication. This is not a change to the policy, but it hopefully helps make this section easier to understand.

Finally, we wanted to note that the AIM Terms of Service (TOS) were last updated in February 2004, and they have been in place for more than a year, so there was no recent change other than the language clarification discussed above.

We hope this addresses any rumors you may have heard and any questions or concerns you might have had. Thank you for your continued use and support of the AIM product and community.

Note that AOL is asserting that they have only modified the langue to clarify what was their intention all along, not to change the real meaning of the earlier wording. This is not what I thought I heard when I read this new.com piece:

Declan McCullagh

[from AOL clarifies IM privacy guarantee]

America Online said late Monday that it plans to revise its user agreement in response to concerns that instant messages sent through the company's service could be monitored.

The new policy for AOL Instant Messenger, or AIM, will stress that the company does not eavesdrop on customer's conversations except in unusual circumstances such as a court order, an AOL spokesman said.

And perhaps Ben Stanfield is a bit too triumphalist in his comments, suggesting that the terms were changed, while AOL's spin mongers are saying they only clarifed. However, I think in general he's right about the amplification of messages through the blogosphere and that AOL moved quickly to stem the rising tide of approbrium.

Thanks go to AOL on several fronts.

First of all, thank you for changing the questionable terms of service. It's honorable of you to acknowledge the concerns your customers have about privacy, and to seek to reassure us.

Second of all, thanks for doing the right thing and not monitoring user-to-user conversations, even when the terms of service seemed to allow that.

And finally, the biggest thank you of all goes to those around the web who helped to amplify a post I wrote here on a blog that got no more than 20 hits a day on a good day. Over the weekend, Typepad reports that over 50,000 of you visited, and that number just keeps growing.

Without the wonderful amplification effect that the Internet, and especially this new age of blogging, there's not much I could have done to get AOL to change the terms of service. Thank you to everyone who helped, and congratulations.