The Recent Uproar Over Zoom's Terms and Conditions & Privacy Policy

Zoom has faced intense scrutiny lately over its terms, conditions, and privacy policies. As video conferencing has become ubiquitous for remote work and collaboration, questions emerged over how our sensitive business data is handled on these third party platforms. There was significant backlash upon learning that under its terms, Zoom maintains broad rights to access, use, and share customer content. For companies developing proprietary technologies and intellectual property, this sparked real concern. Our company, Revscale, has thoroughly analyzed Zoom’s policies amid this uproar to make informed decisions. While Zoom has made updates, issues remain over their “perpetual, worldwide” license to customer data. Due to these ongoing risks, Revscale and all affiliated entities are moving off Zoom. We welcome your thoughts on this issue and if you would make the same decision.

When the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated remote work, services like Zoom became mission critical for countless businesses. Their ease of use and reliability made collaboration seamless during an unprecedented disruption. However, as companies came to rely on these third-party systems, they scrutinized the legal terms dictating data practices. For companies developing confidential technologies and unicorn IP like Revscale, we had an obligation to our stakeholders to fully understand if Zoom’s access to our data jeopardized our competitive advantages.

Last year, an in-depth analysis uncovered alarming revelations in Zoom’s terms, conditions, and privacy policies. It granted Zoom shockingly broad rights to access, use, modify, share, and leverage customer data. Buried deep in the legalese, Zoom maintained a “perpetual, worldwide” license to our videos, chats, files, and meeting data. They could “review, disclose, preserve, extract, modify, reproduce, share, use, display, copy, distribute, translate, transcribe, create derivative works” from our content. This allowed unrestricted usage of our proprietary data to analyze or even directly benefit Zoom’s own services.

For Revscale, these terms raised dire concerns about protecting our intellectual property. Our next-generation technologies could be exposed, analyzed, and exploited by Zoom and its partners. The potential damages were incalculable, given our innovations require massive investments and constitute our core competitive advantages in the market. This crisis demanded urgent action to safeguard Revscale’s interests.

We are assembled a 'task force' including legal, IT, security, and executive stakeholders to address this situation. They will continue to thoroughly review the latest Zoom terms, conditions, and privacy policies to analyze the specific risks and potential impacts based on Revscale’s use cases. We'll evaluate our alternatives to balance mitigating risks versus business continuity disruptions from changing platforms. And in the coming months, Revscale's task force definitely intends to initiate discussions with Zoom representatives to directly address our concerns.

Just last week, Zoom maintained their terms and conditions were never meant to imply they could freely access customer data. They asserted required security controls were in place to protect confidential data and prevent unauthorized usage. However, their broad licensing language clearly granted unrestricted rights to customer content. Their vague assurances carried little weight compared to the far-reaching terms codified in their user agreements. Zoom ultimately needed to substantively update their policies and offer contractual commitments to alleviate our concerns.

After extensive scrutiny and pressure from across the business community, Zoom did make some updates to their terms and conditions. They now state “Zoom does not use any of your audio, video, chat, screen sharing, attachments or other communications-like Customer Content to train Zoom or third-party artificial intelligence models.” This addresses direct usage of proprietary data to develop competing solutions. Zoom also asserted their license is limited to the “Permitted Uses” of providing their services. Their “perpetual, worldwide” rights can no longer be interpreted as allowing unconstrained usage of customer content.

However, Zoom still maintains a broad license for operational purposes, with insufficient guardrails around “Permitted Uses.” Access to extremely sensitive IP remains risky under these policies. For unicorn startups like Revscale developing revolutionary technologies, even operational access creates hazards where data could be exploited. The updates are a step in the right direction but fall short of fully resolving concerns.

After careful consideration, Revscale determined the remaining risks were unacceptable for our business. Our executive team officially decided to move all Revscale operations off Zoom and discontinue future use of its platforms. The perpetual license of our IP could not be reconciled with our obligations to protect our technologies and competitive advantages. Detailed transition plans are now being implemented across IT, security, communications, and business teams to smoothly shift towards new collaboration tools.

Selecting alternatives like Microsoft Teams or Webex entails its own challenges. But their terms grant less broad rights to customer content, so they can better safeguard our IP. Their licensing is more narrowly scoped for delivering specified services. We will continue closely evaluating any platforms that access Revscale data to ensure they align with our security and compliance standards. While migrating tools is a major undertaking, it is imperative to keep our proprietary innovations and unicorn IP secure.

This situation offers some important lessons for any company evaluating third-party technologies:

• Closely scrutinize terms, conditions and policies to understand exactly what access and rights you are granting. Don’t assume protections are in place for your data.
• For proprietary IP, realize that even operational access poses risks of exploitation or competitive harm. Strictly limit third-party access to only what is absolutely necessary.
• Compare alternatives and press vendors to modify terms or policies that don’t adequately protect your business interests. Be willing to walk away if needed.
• Continuously reevaluate tools and platforms as circumstances evolve. Do not assume initial vetting will suffice forever.

We hope this analysis provides insights to guide your own approach for protecting critical assets and innovations. As remote technologies become inextricable from business, we all must stay vigilant against unintended consequences from third-party relationships. Please feel free to share your thoughts on Zoom’s policies, our decision, and lessons learned to help promote more informed practices - we are here to learn in this new world where AI is rapidly changing the landscape on a day-to-day basis. Let me know if you would make the same call in our position or have handled this differently. We welcome diverse perspectives so we can all thrive in today’s complex digital ecosystem.

- UB & The Revscale Team

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