"Your AIM information, including the contents of your online communications, may be accessed and disclosed in response to legal process (for example, a court order, search warrant or subpoena), or in other circumstances in which AOL has a good faith belief that AIM or AOL are being used for unlawful purposes. AOL may also access or disclose your AIM information when necessary to protect the rights or property of AIM or AOL, or in special cases such as a threat to your safety or that of others."

AOL has some new "Terms of Service" for those who use their AOL Instant Messaging servers, and it's pretty crazy:

Although you or the owner of the Content retain ownership of all right, title and interest in Content that you post to any AIM Product, AOL owns all right, title and interest in any compilation, collective work or other derivative work created by AOL using or incorporating this Content. In addition, by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium. You waive any right to privacy. You waive any right to inspect or approve uses of the Content or to be compensated for any such uses.

I'm keenly aware that by communicating with friends and colleagues via AIM, it's easy for someone to eavesdrop on our conversation. I know that anyone on the network can see what I'm passing back and forth, and thus try to not to have too many highly sensitive conversations via AIM. Nefarious observers of packets have always concerned me, but I never thought to be concerned that the company providing the service would share that information.

Millions of people use AIM as a tool to share incredibly personal stories and don't assume that their personal conversations will show up in AOL's marketing materials or other places, especially without their consent. AOL has created a basic expectation of privacy, while secretly sticking in their legal documents that there isn't any. That AOL even thinks it's ok for them to collect these millions of intimate personal conversations is bad enough, but that they grant themselves the right to broadly use such material is simply not acceptable.