4 ms·

I'd love for you to expand on this. Truthfully I am not an expert on copyright law, but I do find many ToS to be fairly self explanatory. I'd be happy to upda

I'd love for you to expand on this. Truthfully I am not an expert on copyright law, but I do find many ToS to be fairly self explanatory. I'd be happy to update the post if I was misleading somewhere.

mrkurt 13y ago
Medium needs a license to your content to publish it. That clause grants them that license. Non-exclusive means they're not asking you for ownership, they're just asking for a license that allows them to distribute the content. If they wanted ownership, they'd do something like Craigslist: > You automatically grant and assign to CL, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant and assign to CL, a perpetual, irrevocable, unlimited, fully paid, fully sub-licensable (through multiple tiers), worldwide license to copy, perform, display, distribute, prepare derivative works from (including, without limitation, incorporating into other works) and otherwise use any content that you post. You also expressly grant and assign to CL all rights and causes of action to prohibit and enforce against any unauthorized copying, performance, display, distribution, use or exploitation of, or creation of derivative works from, any content that you post (including but not limited to any unauthorized downloading, extraction, harvesting, collection or aggregation of content that you post).
- jforman 13y ago
  "they're just asking for a license that allows them to distribute the content" The license is much broader than this: "By furnishing your User Content to Medium, you give Medium a non-exclusive worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable, transferable license to utilize all copyright rights now in existence or that may arise in the future with respect to your User Content, in any medium that now exists or may arise in the future, as well as to do anything else that is reasonably appropriate to our Service and its use of your User Content (including, but not limited to, use of your name in association with your User Content to identify you as the contributor). The license has no restriction as to the medium, dissemination method, type of Service we may offer, or the type of systems or products that may be used in conjunction with your User Content." You can revoke the license by removing your content, which is a silver lining.
  - mrkurt 13y ago
    Most of this is just defining the scope of distribution. Sublicensable is, perhaps, scary -- but it let's them legally allow other entities to distribute the content. This seems necessary for, say, RSS feeds if they want to let others use the content in aggregators. The mediums (lower case m) all make sense, a "best of Medium" coffee table book is still distribution, and likely reasonable? I am actually curious what their general user expectations are for this type of thing. Note that this is clarifying language, though, the right to distribute doesn't imply a specific medium ... so they would be getting the same thing even without being explicit. "Utilize all copyright rights" does include creation of derivative works, which would be an interesting thing for Medium to try and do (and probably go counter to what users would expect). I think that's the only one of the copyright rights that's "weird" for these terms. The "anything else that is reasonably appropriate" clause let's them do stuff that's not normally in the scope of copyright. Reasonable is a legally restrictive word and would actually give power to what their user base generally finds fair. It really seems more like cover-your-butt language than a significantly larger scope.
- yetanotherjosh 13y ago
  That CL language is only slightly more aggressive in terms of ownership than the Medium terms. All CL did there was add the ability to enforce against competitors scraping CL pages and reposting the content on their own sites to bootstrap content, a problem CL has been plagued with from many would-be usurpers and parasites. The author of the ad still retains general ownership of the content. You can legally post something to CL and then post the exact same text to eBay or wherever else, CL is not taking that right from you under those terms. As long as you are the one doing the reposting (not a parasitic third party scraper). Language that takes full ownership would be the kind of thing you'd see in a work-for-hire writing contract, which looks something like this: > The copyright for all Work produced under this agreement shall belong to the Client at all times. Client shall exclusively own in perpetuity all now known or hereafter existing rights of every nature worldwide pertaining to such Work in or as part of any version of the Client’s publications that are published in print or displayed through computer-assisted and other interactive media such as the Internet and World Wide Web (collectively the "Rights").
ubernostrum 13y ago
Step 1: You upload content to some site, with the intent they'll display it to other people. Step 2: They display it to other people. Step 3: If they didn't have a clause like this, you sue for copyright infringement. Basically, in order to do anything useful at all -- even to store the content, assuming a distributed store that makes multiple copies -- they need an actual, honest-to-god copyright license from you, the creator of the content. "But we figured he wanted us to because he uploaded it" is not a license and will not hold up in court. Granting a license does not transfer ownership; it is simply a set of permissions. People who really and truly ought to know better continue to post scary and idiotic posts claiming that it's a change of ownership though. You shouldn't listen to those people.
- yetanotherjosh 13y ago
  +1 in general except I think you are defining "ownership" a bit too narrowly here. For some authoritative discussion on the nature of "ownership" in copyright, see http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap2.html http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap2.html

mrkurt 13y ago

Medium needs a license to your content to publish it. That clause grants them that license. Non-exclusive means they're not asking you for ownership, they're just asking for a license that allows them to distribute the content. If they wanted ownership, they'd do something like Craigslist: > You automatically grant and assign to CL, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant and assign to CL, a perpetual, irrevocable, unlimited, fully paid, fully sub-licensable (through multiple tiers), worldwide license to copy, perform, display, distribute, prepare derivative works from (including, without limitation, incorporating into other works) and otherwise use any content that you post. You also expressly grant and assign to CL all rights and causes of action to prohibit and enforce against any unauthorized copying, performance, display, distribution, use or exploitation of, or creation of derivative works from, any content that you post (including but not limited to any unauthorized downloading, extraction, harvesting, collection or aggregation of content that you post).

jforman 13y ago
"they're just asking for a license that allows them to distribute the content" The license is much broader than this: "By furnishing your User Content to Medium, you give Medium a non-exclusive worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable, transferable license to utilize all copyright rights now in existence or that may arise in the future with respect to your User Content, in any medium that now exists or may arise in the future, as well as to do anything else that is reasonably appropriate to our Service and its use of your User Content (including, but not limited to, use of your name in association with your User Content to identify you as the contributor). The license has no restriction as to the medium, dissemination method, type of Service we may offer, or the type of systems or products that may be used in conjunction with your User Content." You can revoke the license by removing your content, which is a silver lining.
- mrkurt 13y ago
  Most of this is just defining the scope of distribution. Sublicensable is, perhaps, scary -- but it let's them legally allow other entities to distribute the content. This seems necessary for, say, RSS feeds if they want to let others use the content in aggregators. The mediums (lower case m) all make sense, a "best of Medium" coffee table book is still distribution, and likely reasonable? I am actually curious what their general user expectations are for this type of thing. Note that this is clarifying language, though, the right to distribute doesn't imply a specific medium ... so they would be getting the same thing even without being explicit. "Utilize all copyright rights" does include creation of derivative works, which would be an interesting thing for Medium to try and do (and probably go counter to what users would expect). I think that's the only one of the copyright rights that's "weird" for these terms. The "anything else that is reasonably appropriate" clause let's them do stuff that's not normally in the scope of copyright. Reasonable is a legally restrictive word and would actually give power to what their user base generally finds fair. It really seems more like cover-your-butt language than a significantly larger scope.
yetanotherjosh 13y ago
That CL language is only slightly more aggressive in terms of ownership than the Medium terms. All CL did there was add the ability to enforce against competitors scraping CL pages and reposting the content on their own sites to bootstrap content, a problem CL has been plagued with from many would-be usurpers and parasites. The author of the ad still retains general ownership of the content. You can legally post something to CL and then post the exact same text to eBay or wherever else, CL is not taking that right from you under those terms. As long as you are the one doing the reposting (not a parasitic third party scraper). Language that takes full ownership would be the kind of thing you'd see in a work-for-hire writing contract, which looks something like this: > The copyright for all Work produced under this agreement shall belong to the Client at all times. Client shall exclusively own in perpetuity all now known or hereafter existing rights of every nature worldwide pertaining to such Work in or as part of any version of the Client’s publications that are published in print or displayed through computer-assisted and other interactive media such as the Internet and World Wide Web (collectively the "Rights").

ubernostrum 13y ago

Step 1: You upload content to some site, with the intent they'll display it to other people. Step 2: They display it to other people. Step 3: If they didn't have a clause like this, you sue for copyright infringement. Basically, in order to do anything useful at all -- even to store the content, assuming a distributed store that makes multiple copies -- they need an actual, honest-to-god copyright license from you, the creator of the content. "But we figured he wanted us to because he uploaded it" is not a license and will not hold up in court. Granting a license does not transfer ownership; it is simply a set of permissions. People who really and truly ought to know better continue to post scary and idiotic posts claiming that it's a change of ownership though. You shouldn't listen to those people.

yetanotherjosh 13y ago
+1 in general except I think you are defining "ownership" a bit too narrowly here. For some authoritative discussion on the nature of "ownership" in copyright, see http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap2.html http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap2.html