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[railGUN]

I'm troubled by it because when I think of any other context, it would be entirely outrageous, and I think it is no less so here, really. If Facebook started trawling user's posts for things that might be of interest to the New York Times or CNN, and such content started to appear on sites like that without the user's permission or knowledge, there'd be world war 3 over it (and a swift backdown and apology, I'm sure). People say 'meh, every site has clauses like this, look at Facebook etc.' but I've never heard of major site doing what happened yesterday here.

Fundamentally, IMO, when people post here the spirit and intention is that it's a voluntary contribution to this community. It's not a license for things to reposted elsewhere for the profit of others.

I have to agree - this seems shady at best. And Gawker Media of all companies? Shame. A clear explanation of what is going on from Evilore would be great.

 

[Alucrid]

I have to agree - this seems shady at best. And Gawker Media of all companies? Shame. A clear explanation of what is going on from Evilore would be great.

You could, you know, search through this thread since evilore replied a bunch of times and this issue has been cleared up a bunch of times because people have bitched about it a bunch of times.

 

[railGUN]

You could, you know, search through this thread since evilore replied a bunch of times and this issue has been cleared up a bunch of times because people have bitched about it a bunch of times.

My bad, I missed his explanation on page 6 of this thread.

 

[Alucrid]

My bad, I missed his explanation on page 6 of this thread.

Page 1 bro. Good job though.

I am against it, which is why it wasn't there before and I acted informally about it. But people are making a big fuss, so it's added to protect the site and clarify our position if it comes up in the future.

To clarify, it's a non-exclusive license, not a transfer of ownership or losing your own rights to what you post. So if you feel I'm a completely evil asshole who will use your posts for nefarious means, by all means go ahead and delete your posts and stop using your account and all. But nothing has really changed, because what is described in the ToS is how we've always operated in effect up to this point anyway.

Lets not forget our resident make-sense-of-legal-stuff gaffer.

Let me just stick my oar in here briefly. Usual disclaimer - details vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, so I'm just looking at common law and generally-recognised international copyright law.

Basically I'm not too fussed about this at all.

1) Your copyright

You have copyright in anything you post that is original to you (that includes original photos, text, photoshops etc). Licensing these to NeoGAF through the TOS does not take that away. So you have not lost any legal rights if somebody steals it in whole or in part.

2) Licence to NeoGAF

The revised TOS give NeoGAF a perpetual etc etc licence to republish etc etc blah blah. It does not mean that NeoGAF gets your copyright. It does mean that you can't sue for copyright breach either NeoGAF or anyone that NeoGAF lets use it.

The retrospectively applicable TOS looks a bit dodgy - but no more so than many others out there (and they haven't really been tested by the courts, so I am unsure of the impact). It looks a lot of words, but they are mostly in practice harmless except for two things.

First: there's a potential exposure if NeoGAF ever gets taken over by someone less scrupulously straightforward than EvilLore. I'd prefer if the licence were non-transferable rather than transferable, so that (a) we are protected in the event of a takeover (b) EvilLore gets an extra negotiating point to avoid a takeover if he wants to (c) nobody (e.g. Kotaku) will be able to argue they had a transferred licence and syndicate your post off to umpteen million other places.

Second: there's a potential issue if a copied post gives ground for action by a third party. For example, there are some posts on GAF (including some of mine) that are potentially libellous if taken out of the context of the whole thread. And you could end up on the wrong end of a libel case. I don't think that's dreadfully likely though, and in any event EvilLore is not stupid enough to licence such posts out anyway.

3) There's a way around it (there's ALWAYS a way around it)

NeoGAF can only claim to be able to licence the copyright of something that is original to the poster. If the poster doesn't have copyright in the material posted, then NeoGAF can't acquire any such rights by virtue of the TOS.

So, if you're really worried about this, write out your posts and have your wife post them on her account. They're not her copyright, so NeoGAF acquires no rights in them whatsoever.

If you don't have a wife - go get one.

 

[Korey]

I wonder why Kotaku didn't ask the poster himself for permission to use his post (instead of EviLore)

 

[rainking187]

Page 1 bro. Good job though.

Lets not forget our resident make-sense-of-legal-stuff gaffer.

That's an explanation of the new TOS. Doesn't really explain why he allowed Kotaku of all places to repost a thread from another user without asking him first.

 

[railGUN]

Page 1 bro. Good job though.




Lets not forget our resident make-sense-of-legal-stuff gaffer.

Did you miss GoFreaks post right above mine, where I was simply agreeing to what he wrote? Or are you singling me out for some reason? All I said was it seemed shady, and when EvilLore himself says he doesn't like Kotaku, it makes me wonder why he would allow such a thing?

But I digress, I don't post anything of any worth here, so I don't give a shit either way, but I do understand some posters taking issue.

 

[gofreak]

edit - Meh. I've said plenty on this already, we could go round and round on it. I think it's up to the powers that be to offer more on it if they want at this stage.

 

[Alucrid]

That's an explanation of the new TOS. Doesn't really explain why he allowed Kotaku of all places to repost a thread from another user without asking him first.

Did you miss GoFreaks post right above mine, where I was simply agreeing to what he wrote? Or are you singling me out for some reason? All I said was it seemed shady, and when EvilLore himself says he doesn't like Kotaku, it makes me wonder why he would allow such a thing?

But I digress, I don't post anything of any worth here, so I don't give a shit either way, but I do understand some posters taking issue.

Yeah. Page 3 broskies.

For fuck's sake, I don't even like Kotaku. We haven't entered some sort of content-stealing partnership. We haven't entered a partnership at all. They asked permission for something they could have done regardless, because they were being polite. And because people don't like Kotaku they're now outraged that Kotaku asked me for permission instead of the original poster. Well that's fine; here we are to keep the next time around from becoming a stressful IP law debate. With my wonderful meaningless non-exclusive license I can now give my completely pointless yet also polite permission, since this is the internet and everyone reposts everything from everywhere else with attribution at best or nothing at worst.

 

[Bazhard]

We are now.

Kotaku has to keep making posts some how right? i mean it's not like real journalism goes on over there so why not just create articles based on gaf threads?