Hold Off On YouTube
YouTube has had a big week,
but read this before you post your videos there. First came the announcement that the
website’s users are watching more than 100 million videos per day – that makes
it by far the most popular video sharing website. And now, YouTube has released
new terms of use. But unfortunately, they’ve added some very questionable
language.
By submitting the User
Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide,
non-exclusive,
royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use,
reproduce,
distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User
Submissions
in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its
successor's)
business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing
part or
all of the YouTube Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media
formats
and through any media channels....The foregoing license granted by you
terminates once you remove or delete a User Submission from the YouTube
Website.
Hmm,
that sounds phishy.The last line does seem to protect the creator's
rights, to an extent. Also interesting is that now in the terms of use right above that excerpt it says (bold theirs), for clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions.
Did YouTube add this after people starting pointing out the problems
with the new terms? I'd bet on it. But I still don't think this
completely clears up the concern.
There's an interesting discussion on Boing Boing about what this really means, and Wired.com has a thorough explanation of what this could
mean for people who post original content on YouTube.
4 Comments
1/5 billion dollars
Yeah, google wants to argue about copyrights on youtube. I guess they'll win. In fact 1/5 billion dollars
note: via boingboing -
note: via boingboing - youtube responded - here is the quote: www.boingboing.net/2006/07/20/more_on_youtubes_con.html
also pasted here...
Jennifer Nielsen, Marketing Manager for YouTube, writes:
To clarify, YouTube never intended to sell, and never obtained any rights to sell, any User Submissions on CD or other physical media. The sentence you quoted was intended to enable YouTube to syndicate all or part of our website through third party websites (including to enable our embed functionality), in mobile contexts, and similar types of syndication.
---
not sure if "intended" cuts it - i would like them to better spell out what they will not do with it then...
Re YouTube - thanks Bonnie
Bonnie - wouldn't have heard about this if not for your blog. Thanks for the heads up. The issue of intellectual property comes up more and more these days. How are thinkers/writers/creatives supposed to earn a living when everyone expects to get stuff for free (on YouTube, via PDF, etc)? A tricky question for people on the bleeding edge - turning your IP into a commodity is a thin line to walk. What do you guys (as creatives yourselves) think?
Re YouTube
Hi Rob,
You're right that the issue of intellectual property is talked about a
lot. I think that's because technology is quickly changing the reality
of intellectual property, particularly how it is published and
disseminated. As for thinkers/writers/creatives, I think they can make
a lot of money by giving their products away. It gets their work out
there, which often leads to more sales. They can also look at different
business models, like providing correlating services or valued addeds.
On the consumer end, a good example is p2p file sharing, which got me
to like Modest Mouse. I have since bought three of their albums because
I wanted to have the cds adn do anything I want with them.
The creatives (not to mention consumers) are often getting hurt by too
much intellectual property and a real disregard for the public domain
that we have never seen before in this country. Excessive copyrights
are preventing good materials from being better and morphing into new
areas. I am completely for protecting intellectual property, but the
notion of perpetuity is scary. We're all big fans of Lessig here.