Who Owns Your MSN Space?

According to Microsoft's Michael Connolly, you do.

Some bloggers have wondered what Microsoft will do with their content, since the terms of use clearly give MS all the rights:

For materials you post or otherwise provide to Microsoft related to the MSN Web Sites (a "Submission"), you grant Microsoft permission to (1) use, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, modify, translate and reformat your Submission, each in connection with the MSN Web Sites

Well, Michael assures you that MSN won't steal the photos from your vacation and make a bundle off of them:

Who Owns My Blog Content?

An interesting discussion has cropped up around the ownership of content you post to your Space. Specifically, a few people have dissected the legal language in our Terms of Use, and interpreted it as saying that we somehow own your creative work.

That is not the case at all. You own the content you post. Period.

I’m not a lawyer, but we have one of those guys down the hall. He says that the wording in the TOU is all about granting us the right to post your content and share it out on MSN. Since you own it, we need that right to actually draw it on the screen.

Hope that clears this up. We’re looking at make changes to the wording of our TOU so it’s less confusing.

Good to know.
(via Scoble)