for any legal (or just knowledgable) folks on my flists

[kaigou]

[Site-name redacted since that's not the issue.]

I think I'm getting what they're saying, and I'm not sure I'm liking it, so maybe I'm missing something. What does the following mean, in real-world non-fancy terms? Or at least, what's your impression of what it (might) mean?

"By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content, messages, text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, profiles, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, "Content") on or through the Services, you hereby grant to [site], a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense through unlimited levels of sublicensees) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute such Content on and through the Services. This license will terminate at the time you remove such Content from the Services. You represent and warrant that: (i) you own the Content posted by you on or through the Services or otherwise have the right to grant the license set forth in this section, and (ii) the posting of your Content on or through the Services does not violate the privacy rights, publicity rights, copyrights, contract rights or any other rights of any person. You agree to pay for all royalties, fees, and any other monies owing any person by reason of any Content posted by you to or through the Services."

Comments

[law_nerd]

Legal person here -- but not a specialist in IP law (I teach it, but I don't *do* it), and this ain't any kind of advice, much less legal advice...

I'd read that to say:

If you put stuff you've created on our site we have the right to do anything we want with it, including -- if we can figure out how -- making money off it.

We can let other people use it too (how one becomes a sub-licensee isn't clear, it may be that all users of the service are sub-licensees and therefore can use each others content ... or it could require separate contracts.)

We have to stop if you take your stuff and go home. (That is, of course, if they make it possible to take your stuff ... some social networking sites make it next to impossible to get all the info off of an account and shut it down.)

If you put stuff that someone else created onto our site, and the someone else comes after us. It's all your fault (not ours) and you have to pay anything they can dig out of you.

---

Or, in other words, a quite typically nasty out of the box contract that the site owners like 'cause it gives everything to them ... even though chances are they've no idea what exactly to do with "everything" once it's there.

[kaigou]

Alrighty, then. That's what I thought I was reading, but some rational part of me said, no way! That's, just, ridiculous! On what planet does that work!? If I stored my stuff in a garage at your storage company, you don't get the right to play dress-up in my stored clothes or paw through my boxes of books, and you certainly don't get the right to rent those out (let alone amend them!)... Okay, not the best real-world analogy, but still. The notion of storing something on a server and this granting the hosting companies full rights (excuse me, above and beyond any everyday sense of "full rights") just boggles my mind.

Or we can just mark this up as another thing we can blame on Facebook, for getting away with it and thus leading others to thinking they can do the same.

[law_nerd]

Part of the problem with the common law system is that new things don't generally get new laws, or new forms of contract. Instead we look at what made sense when the law was being developed in the 1700's and 1800's and most issues involved sheep^*.

So if I let you pasture your sheep on my land, you could pay, or I could get some of the sheep, or some of their wool (with which I could do anything I wanted). If we had an agreement and you stopped paying, I'd eventually be entitled to *all* of your sheep. (And the storage company can sell, or play dress-up in, your stored stuff if you stop paying them.)

IP is not sheep. But hundreds of years of legal precedent regarding sheep tends to influence some of the dafter things people try to do with IP. Including: you can use our pasture, but then we want a right to some sheep ... oh, and since these aren't tangible sheep we can have the whole herd and eat it too ... so, really, we want all the rights to all your sheep content.

One of the things I'm most curious about is what they propose to do if you do remove your content. If that content has been: used, copied, modified, adapted, translated, publicly performed, publicly displayed, stored, reproduced, transmitted, and distributed ... how are they going to track down every vestige of it wherever it has been reproduced, and stored by an unlimited number of sub-licensees? So if they *can't* undo what has been done, once the license is terminated can the original content producer demand royalties for ongoing using, copying, etc.

---
^*Author freely admits to having some lingering ovinophobia thanks to having to read far too much old English caselaw on the way to her J.D.

[kaigou]

Sheep. I never would've thought, but it does make sense. Still. Sheep. I mean, sheep. I think there's dirt in my backyard that's smarter than the average sheep.

Snerks aside, that does make sense. I know at least that much from my time working for a lawyer, that precedent goes way back. I just didn't realize how much even the newest law must sometimes reach that far back.

As for the removing content? Well, if you go by Facebook's example, the answer is that they don't. Not only are they keeping it all, they won't even let you see what they've kept. Fortunately (if there is a bright lining in this), FB's international HQ is in Ireland, which just so happens to have passed a new law about online privacy and user's rights. Not sure how it'll roll out, but just reading the list of FB violations of that Irish law are enough to give any person with a reasonable expectation of privacy... a completely dashed set of expectation, and possibly also a case of the hives.