Who's Sorry Now?
Maybe you, if you're posting your video to YouTube with the hopes of being "discovered". Here's the fine print on who REALLY owns your content:
The newly revised Terms and Conditions page at YouTube raises important questions for anyone who uploads videos there. Eliot Van Buskirk at the Wired News music blog "Listening Post" writes:
Maybe you, if you're posting your video to YouTube with the hopes of being "discovered". Here's the fine print on who REALLY owns your content:
The newly revised Terms and Conditions page at YouTube raises important questions for anyone who uploads videos there. Eliot Van Buskirk at the Wired News music blog "Listening Post" writes:
Musicians such as Billy Bragg have been complaining about networking/music site MySpace's terms of use – and rightfully so. MySpace is said to be changing its tune, and should be posting updated terms soon (currently, its About page is offline).The video site YouTube constitutes an equal or larger threat to small content producers. Before you upload that video of your 19-person indie rocker reggae band, for instance, you may want to read the fine print. YouTube's "new" Terms & Conditions allow them to sell whatever you uploaded however they want:
"…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."
Among other things, this means they could strip the audio portion of any track and sell it on a CD. Or, they could sell your video to an ad firm looking to get "edgy"; suddenly your indie reggae tune could be the soundtrack to a new ad for SUVs. The sky's still the limit, when it comes to the rights you surrender to YouTube when you upload your video. 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.
