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Mark another notch on Boing Boing's bedpost. The super-popular weblog is known for getting a story fast, instead of right, and running updates until it's actually negated the original story. This time, the story is about YouTube's not-really-harmful terms of service.

Boing Boing flashed the headline "YouTube's new policy says: we own your content" yesterday, linking to a Wired News story that said as much. But the writer they quoted conveniently snipped out the first and last sentences of a scary-looking passage. That writer — Eliot Van Buskirk — nearly fooled us all. (I even figured out how to exploit YouTube.)

But as Boing Boing eventually noted, Eliot clipped out these two lines, which were in bold on the site.

"For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions."
"The foregoing license granted by you terminates once you remove or delete a User Submission from the YouTube Website."

In other words, if anyone bothered to check the terms instead of swallowing Eliot's story whole, they'd realize there was no story. YouTube, a little miffed at the whole affair, gently spanked Boing Boing on its corporate blog.

By the way, the "new" terms have been up since last year.

YouTube's new policy says: we own your content. [Boing Boing]
More on YouTube's controversial new terms and conditions [Boing Boing]
Our Terms of Use Clarified [YouTube]