When I first learned about reCAPTCHA, I thought it was a great idea. Then I read the terms of use:
“Ownership of Data and Information; Carnegie Mellon’s Use of Personally-Identifiable Information. All data and information generated from the access and use of the Website and Service, including any image solved (whether or not correct) shall be the property of Carnegie Mellon, and no third party, including you, shall have the right to own such data and information, or use such data or information except as expressly authorized by these Terms and Conditions. By using the Website and Service, you automatically assign to Carnegie Mellon any rights in the data or information generated from the access and use of the Website and Service, including any image solved (whether or not correct) of yours and third party users of your website providing interpretations of images (and you agree to make sure that the third party users of your website assign these rights in the data and information to Carnegie Mellon).”
Today Google announced that they are buying the company which Carnegie Mellon spun off from the reCAPTCHA project.
Its amazing how people will just hand over value to large companies.
Actually, considering how much OCR-related* software Google has released under open source licenses, I may consider using reCAPTCHA in the future.
- OCR = Optical Character Recognition, in simpler terms the ability to scan text into documents with words, rather than images.