Considering Terms of Service…

I’m a bit hesitant to write this post, because I don’t want to come off as sounding negative. But, BOY have I been running into this issue of late. And I feel compelled to offer up a friendly warning to my friends in craft.

So, the chain of events that led me here:

I got an email from Sharpie. They’re developing a new website, and they wanted to link to this post of mine on it. However, they attached a Submission License agreement to their email. It contained this language:

“You hereby grant Sanford Corporation the following rights: (a) An irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free perpetual license to use and exploit the Submission, including, without limitation, the title(s) and each and every element of the Submission, in whole or in part, in any and all manner and media throughout the
world; and (b) The right to use your name, voice, image, likeness and biographical data in connection with both the Submission and the Promotion, including, without
limitation, in credits, advertising, publicity, promotional and marketing materials. 2. You hereby acknowledge and agree that: (a) Sanford Corporation shall have the right to crop, edit, alter or arrange the Submission in any way it desires in Sanford Corporation’s sole discretion; (b) Sanford Corporation shall not have any obligation to provide you with any credit when using your Submission, but in the event Sanford Corporation chooses to provide you with credit the size and placement of the credit shall be at Sanford Corporation’s sole discretion…”

Ouch! I politely declined the opportunity to be linked. Although, for the record, you have to give Sharpie some props for at least being up-front about their terms of use.

Fast forward a couple weeks. I noticed that CraftBlips.com was picking up my blog feed and putting summaries and links to my posts on its website. I always wish that a craft portal website would ask my permission before they do this, but that rarely happens. You can’t argue with increased exposure, of course. I just dig the courtesy.

Anyway, later I became aware of their Terms of Use, which state:

“…You agree that by posting messages, uploading files, inputting data, or engaging in any other form of communication with or through the Site, you grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive, unrestricted, worldwide license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, enhance, transmit, distribute, publicly perform, display, or sublicense any such communication in any medium (now in existence or hereinafter developed) and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, and to authorize others to do so. You acknowledge that you are responsible for whatever material you submit, and you, not us, have full responsibility for the message, including its legality, reliability, appropriateness, originality, and copyright.”

Again, Ouch. It bewilders me that any corporate entity would take content they are not paying people for and exercise this kind of control over it.

For the record, the folks at CraftBlips were very responsive and open to my feedback. They explained to me that those ownership rights were only applied to content people post to the site, not to feeds they picked up.

Still, I asked them to remove my content from the site.

And then lastly, my mother had an email from FaveCrafts.com, a website that portals a variety of free projects. They wanted her to submit a project to the website.

Terms of Service say:

“By sending or transmitting to us creative suggestions, ideas, notes, concepts, information, or other materials (collectively, ” Submission Materials”) or by posting such Submission Materials on the Sites, you hereby grant to us and our designees a worldwide, non-exclusive, sub licensable (through multiple tiers), assignable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to use, reproduce, distribute (through multiple tiers), create derivative works of, publicly perform, publicly display, digitally perform, make, have made, sell, offer for sale and import such Submission Materials in any media now known or hereafter devised, for any purpose whatsoever, commercial or otherwise, without compensation to you, the provider of the Submission Materials. The foregoing license to PPL shall be fully paid-up and royalty free. In addition, under no circumstances shall PPL have any obligation whatsoever to pay a fee to any subscriber or user in connection with the Submission Materials upon the occurrence of a transfer of all or any portion of PPL’s business through a merger, sale or transfer of all or substantially all of the assets of PPL, nor shall the sale of advertising on any of the Sites give rise to any obligation to pay a fee to Subscribers.”

So, I advised her against.

I’m not an attorney. I’m willing to concede that portal websites may need strong legal language like this to protect themselves. What dismays me, again, is that these websites are making use of people’s content, not paying them, and then using it for commercial gain. So having them also assert these Draconian rights of ownership seems to add insult to injury.

I’d like to believe that the legal language could be written to better protect both the company and the crafter.

You do good work. You deserve to own it and decide how it’s used. But yes – when you’re building your audience online, it can be a boon to have your work featured on a large corporate website – and I’ve certainly considered it a boon many times in my crafting career.

So, I am not advising you to keep your work off corporate sites. Just promise me that when an opportunity arises, you’ll take a moment to read the Terms of Service before you agree. And think long and hard about whether the work you’re submitting is something you’re willing to release completely.

And if you don’t agree with a company’s TOS, consider speaking up. None of this changes unless we resist.