Handing your rights to YouTube
p2pnet.net News:- Before you upload your video masterpiece to YouTube, better read the company’s new Terms & Conditions.
That’s because when you check it out, you’ll find, “…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,” Wired News‘ Listening Post emphasises.
YouTube, currently being sued by a US video news company for, “allowing its users to upload copyrighted video footage,” is becoming the darling of the corporate entertainment cartels with EMI and NBC both buying into it.
With the new T&C, “they [YouTube] could strip the audio portion of any track and sell it on a CD,” says Listening Post, going on, “Or, they could sell your video to an ad firm looking to get ‘edgy’.”
The sky’s still the limit, when it comes to the rights you surrender to YouTube when you upload your video, says the story, adding:
“Perhaps even scarier is the idea that anyone who might eventually buy YouTube would automatically obtain these same rights. Since YouTube is so popular, with 100 million videos shown each day, it’s an attractive acquisition target for any number of companies.”
(Thanks, Masha)
Also See:
Wired News – YouTube’s ‘New’ Terms Still Fleece Musicians, July 18, 2006
currently being sued – YouTube sued over Denny flic, July 18, 2006
the darling – NBC buys into YouTube, June 28, 2006
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July 21st, 2006 at 12:57 pm
i dont think most people care because the majority of posts are by bored teenagers that are ripped form tv or of non monetary value being comedy or accidents etcetc – after all who the hell actually reads terms and conditions??
July 21st, 2006 at 3:32 pm
Obviously the agreement is just like the sonwriter to publisher giveway contracts. They give up everything in exchange for practically nothing.
Of course this agreement may not be valid in many jurisdictions, where rights to property can only be sold though a notarized public document. While this “public document” rule is simple, ot prevents many problems such as:
- Transfer of property not owned.
- Transfer by underaged or incapacitated owners.
- Lack of explanation of terms and consequences to signers of the document.
- The legal ownership of properties can be checked in the courts through searches of court records.
The agreement may also not be valid because the parties do not get a copy of the agreement signed by both parties involved. Onviously an unsigned copy of a changeable electronic document file is worthless to prove an agreement was made.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
July 21st, 2006 at 4:49 pm
Rafael,
You are certainly correct, however, as you know
from painful personal experience, the law is only as
good as the amount of cash in your bank account.
Even if there is a legal basis for a poster to keep the rights
to what they put on YouTube, how many do you think could
afford the cash to protect those rights ?
The law is absolutely useless to ordinary people.
Ordinary people WILL get tired of it.
July 21st, 2006 at 8:35 pm
Your point is correct. If ordinary people want to claim the rights YouTube also claims a costly lawyer and litigation may be required.
If on the other hand YouTube wants to make a killimg by selling the rights to a third party, the third party will likely not be willing to pay without the evidence of a signed, legal document transferring the rights to YouTube, as is required by the Copyright Act, which says:
Sec. 204. Execution of transfers of copyright ownership
(a) A transfer of copyright ownership, other than by operation of law, is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance, or a note or memorandum of the transfer, is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed or such owner’s duly authorized agent.
Others may not be willing to acquire rights or licenses from YuoTube because they know how YouTube obtained the alleged rights, through unsigned, non public documents and changeable electronic documents.
Basically the YouTube rights are worthless, in my opinion.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
July 21st, 2006 at 11:29 pm
what YT is saying in this terms is exactly what us “p2p-criminals” also want to do.
The right to use the stuff we get as we want to use it!
they don’t say that you must give them the exclusive right to use your content.
so YOU are not forbidden to also make a bug or 2 out of your creative work. Al you grant them is the NON-exclusive right that they can try to make a bug out of it!
in contrary A musician that gives away his copyrights to the cartel gives his rights exclusively away to this company and can not make a bug of it on his own by selling it to someone else!
so whats the fuzz about this TOS change now?
this swedish blogger is asking this question also and explaining it quite well i think.
http://piracy-unlimited.blogspot.com/2006/07/why-is-youtube-so-bad-o.html
July 22nd, 2006 at 10:11 am
“so whats the fuzz about this TOS change now?”
The problem is… very complicated.
1. Money. Someday, YouTune will sublicense some of the video or a derivative (which surely will belong exclusively to YouTube – more on derivatives below) to others, for money, and nothing will be shared with the producer and the actors in the video. This is not fair.
2. Legal. A point that need making is that to license something you have to be the owner or the owner authorized you to issue licenses in a written and signed document. We have none of that at YouTube, which has no way of knowing if it was licensed by the owners and was not authorized to license others in writing.
3. Derivatives. Within the YouTube scheme, a video can somehow modified, becoming a derivative work of the original video and the derivative work will have a copyright owner. Surely YouTube will become the exclusive rights owner of the derivative work. Of course if the derivative is an improved version of the original, the derivative may compete and beat in market value the original, particularly if the owner of the original is impossible to find,
4. Moral rights. Derivatives have a knack of defeated the moral rights as well as the name/reputation of the original author, as the derivative work could actually be a gruesome distortion of the original work.
5. Legal liability. When an original producer of a video authorizes other to make a “do as you please and don’t show it to me” derivative work or use the work in anyway, he/she is a sitting duck for a lawsuit based on privacy or defamation issues. It is unfair to expose people without legal sophistication by inducing them to give their work and name for others to use indiscriminately.
Surely until a needed huge copyright reform (modernized to the digital and Internet age) is made, copyright issues (including copyright ownership, transfers, licenses) are not for the faint hearted and the ocasional movie maker (or songwriter, etc).
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
July 23rd, 2006 at 1:54 pm
well they have to generate a story right , anyone who really uses the site doesnt worry about things like this
July 24th, 2006 at 3:05 pm
“The foregoing license granted by you terminates once you remove or delete a User Submission from the YouTube Website.”
Its a trick.
Because once YouTube has licensed other to make derivative works or has made its own derivative work they have full ownership rights over the derivative work from which they can even make more derivatives.
This is similar to the limited time contracts which publishers get songwriters to sign. While the contact says it is for a limited time (this is the part pointed to before the contract is signed), somewhere in the contract it says that the assignment of rights are for the life of the rights. Clearly the intention is to deceive the songwriter.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com