Last week, several dozen high profile bloggers jumped the gun and started writing nasty things about YouTube's new terms.
…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… in any media formats and through any media channels.
http://www.youtube.com/t/terms
Bloggers across the blogosphere simply reposted what Wired magazine and BoingBoing posted without actually reading the terms themselves. As pointed out on a couple blogs, Eliot Van Buskirk, the original poster failed to disclose that the terms also contain the following two statements.
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.
This completely contradicts Eliot's claims, BoingBoing's claims and well everybody elses.
Digging further, you'll also find out that these supposedly new terms have been around for at least six months, if not longer. But, the real truth is that these terms are standard for any forum or community where the users generate the content. In order for YouTube to play your video for me, they require that they license that video from you. That's what this license says. Nothing more.
Of course YouTube needs a license to play my videos, I don't dispute that. But the license is broader than I feel comfortable with.
Since I don't know who you are or which of blogs you write, I can't really respond other than to say that yes, I read the posts that I linked to above.
Randy
I'm not sure it's a *complete* contradiction, and yes, they do have to license it .. the question I believe everyone os wondering about is 'when will *standard* licensing terms" begin to change, to reflect more of a fair shake between creator and distributor(s) ?
I doubt most users care less about geek style (creative commons or whatever) licensing. They just want to do cool stuff.
Randy
- James Holderness
James,
Agreed!
Randy