In the first item, AOL is claiming a copyright for the *compilation* work
that  they are  doing in  selecting what  things to  put on  their public
areas. They are also telling their  customers that they can only use such
material for their private use.  This essentially means that Joe Customer
can't  FTP AOL's  public  directories  to his  BBS  and  sell access  for
$5/month.  AOL  doesn't claim  copyright  for  the  contents of  all  the
original text, just for the work  involved in selecting and compiling the
data (ie the manpower this costs them). You can still get permission from
the original  authors to use the  original items (but not  the collective
compilation) in another way.
 
The  second item  is for  their protection.  They're saying  that if  Joe
Customer writes an essay and decides to  post it in the public areas, AOL
is  free  to   redistribute  it  for  free,  and  so   on.  That  is  the
straightforward part - you can't have people sending AOL a bill for every
usenet article they  authored on the assumption that it  made AOL so much
more attractive to other customers :-)  The part that may sound confusing
is the one about third party work posted to the public area. It may sound
like AOL  is trying to  assume the right to  resell the material  on your
list.  What they  really mean  is that  they don't  have the  manpower or
desire to  review each and  every posting as it  is placed in  the public
area. So, if  Joe Customer places something written by  a third party (or
coming  from a  mailing list)  in their  public area,  Joe is  implicitly
warranting to  AOL that  there won't  be any  copyright problem.  If this
later turns out  to be restricted material and someone  sues AOL, AOL can
in turn sue Joe to recover.
 
I  think you'll  find that  these  are pretty  standard service  provider
terms, at least  assuming they only apply to the  public areas. Like most
legal documents they sound very fascist :-)
 
  Eric