I’m no fan of MySpace. I’ve discovered that it used to be a spam site, and I think its current incarnation is essentially useless. But that’s no excuse for making up nonsense to scare people away from it.
A story on Digg right now claims that MySpace has unlimited license to do whatever they want with music and movies you upload to them. Indeed, such a thing is written into their ToS.
By posting any Content on or through the Services, you hereby grant to MySpace.com, a worldwide license to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute such Content on and through the Services.
Enough to make you nervous… if you don’t think about it at all. The “Terms of Service” or “Terms of Use” of a website is not a legal document–it’s written by lawyers so that it’s comprehensive, but it’s not a binding contract. For example, if MySpace’s terms said “By signing up you grant us your firstborn child,” no court would take that seriously. Similarly, if MySpace started selling compilation CDs and paying the artists diddly-squat, that would create huge lawsuits and be far too risky. Even posting your holiday snaps on Fox News without your permission would be legally an awful idea.
What this statement in the Terms of Service really means is that MySpace has the right to show your stuff to the world, on their website. So, why doesn’t it just say that? Well, the Internet doesn’t really have any sort of firm precedent. Is it a news medium? A method of publishing? Nobody really knows. As one of the largest social sites right now, MySpace has to make sure its ToS is absolutely all-inclusive.
The problem is on the side of IP law, not on MySpace’s part. We need a new legal classification for the Internet that basically says when you upload something it’s not unreasonable to expect to see it on the website you posted it to, and then this whole ToS stuff will be cleared up.
Wow!Nasty!
I will have to let my friends know about that.Most of them never read this things.
You can find some stories with real insight on digg, and then you get this. A lot of hoopla about nothing. If you stop to discern what myspace says in its ToS, it’s basically legal jargon for what you state in a more concrete way in your last paragraph. Good commentary.
It also says “This license will terminate at the time you remove such Content from the Services.” So really, as soon as you delete something, they can’t do a thing with it… So in other words, if they started selling CD compliations or something, if a user deleted a song, they would have to stop selling it immediately, and reprint the CDs without that song. If they were planning on stealing content to make money, they would make it more difficult to break the agreement. The way it is now, they would be much more likely to lose money by creating products that would soon become illegal to sell.
I actually had a close look to this and the licence is terminated when you remove your content.
What is disturbing though is the fact that in the moment you put something up,becomes theirs too.
on the other hand if you didn’t grant them this usage, some jasckass lawyer would figure out a way to sue them for copyright violation
Very interesting. I wouldn’t have thought about it.
this has been a pretty standard clause in all such agreements for as long as i have online (a few days before aol took over netscape).
@ that time yahoo had it; (theirs was the most advatageously phrased @ the time)
last year msn had it when i was there for a bit,
& i just read it @ myspace a few days ago.
in many ways theirs seemed more clearly worded…making it obviously explicit that this grant is limited to ‘their use’ on “their service”.
i’d rather reread the document before trying to make a strong case for it; but 1 might argue that any such document is deceptively self contradictory.
1) it sets out an offer to provide a service for “free”.
2) it sets out, as a precondition of use, a clause, which if exercised by the corporation, would result in acrrual to them of a profit which could ~have so accrued except by their provision of the service & which must be presumed ot have been accruable to the ‘author/user’ had the clause been initially excluded from the agreement.
this i would argue…makes the profit in every essential sense a fee for service. thus interpreting ‘for’ the corporation is impossible…either the agreement is self contractory on the ground that it both denies & requires a ‘fee for service’ & is |- uninforcable v the corporation breeches it by their exercise. in either case, the clause is deceptively phrased.
unlike most people, it has been a habit of mine to scan every legal document i am preparing to sign. impatience & induced gratification urgency are conditions common to much of the ‘modern western world’ (but we’d be glad to export them). where lies the occassion for surprise if one considers the ‘evolution’ of concepts of ‘commitment’ as re: ‘acceptance of consequence’.
get booted from 1 service…come back by another name v go to another service…download “copyrighted” material @ your leisure…”who cares what that agreement says”…extend the dots…
how many even assume themselve competent to evaluate an agreement if they did read it…& the company would be rather unlikely to make a provision exception in their unique case if they understood & disagreed.
great topic…leads off in so many directions…
thanks,
b
uiy7i7i8i
whatz up
watz good
They need to do this so what hapenned to Napster doesn’t happen to them. They state that this licenses is only good during the period that your stuff is on their servers. They are just trying to stop something that would have eventually have caused them to have to shut down their company.
Jeffrey. A. Solochek
http://www.nosugarcoating.info
Anyone else having bother with myspace or is it just my pc?
Last couple of days it seems it wont let me download any song from anywhere.
Anyone having same bother – or anyone how to sort it?
you can add that musicians weren’t getting paid for their uploads either. while that’s starting to change, you will notice that most artists have the burnlounge logo on their websites.