YouTube: “We Pwn J00!”

Wednesday, Jul. 19 2006 | Author: J. Angelo Racoma

Better think twice before posting your favorite videos to YouTube. You might just be giving them a license to sell your soul. YouTube’s updated terms of use essentially allows them rights over your content, including selling it in any form or media.

From Wired,

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.

To quote from the YouTube terms itself,

… 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, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the YouTube Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels. You also hereby grant each user of the YouTube Website a non-exclusive license to access your User Submissions through the Website, and to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display and perform such User Submissions as permitted through the functionality of the Website and under these Terms of Service.

Short of saying they practically own your content (until you remove it from their site, that is), that will also be the case in the event that YouTube gets acquired.

I remember writing on company Terms of Service here a while back. They’re mostly one-sided. The fact that community-driven sites such as video sharing, blogging and social networking web apps have such a large aggregation of user-contributed content makes you wonder if they’re sifting through your material to studying for trends and user-identifiable activity.

When in doubt, delete!

The foregoing license granted by you terminates once you remove or delete a User Submission from the YouTube Website.

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6 Responses for "YouTube: “We Pwn J00!”"

shamingstephenryder

July 19th, 2006 at 2:52 pm
1

Good stuff.
Ant

July 19th, 2006 at 5:25 pm
2

All heil mein internet.
Spengs

July 19th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
3

Well, I suppose that means they’ll be 100% responsible for taking the consequences for any copyright material people post, then. They “own” it, after all.

I don’t post on You Tube, so it doesn’t directly effect me. Still seems kinda sketchy, though.
tollie williams

July 19th, 2006 at 10:27 pm
4

Does it really hurt to read the actual terms?

For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions. However, by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, …

Emphasis included and mine added to show what was omited by Wired and by this article. (Note, it’s possible You Tube added the former later, however I’d like to know if you actually read the You Tube terms before posting this.)
jangelo

July 19th, 2006 at 11:04 pm
5

Yes, I actually read the darn long thing. They were careful with the wording. You do own your content, but given that they can practically do anything like re-sell it or present it for profit without the need to pay royalties, it’s tantamount to your giving it to them in the first place.
tollie williams

July 20th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
6

So after you read it, did you actually choose to leave out the part where it says “For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions?”

Anyways, without knowing anything about their intent, this is not uncommon. The same snafu happened when Yahoo’s lawyers got a hold of Geocities.

They add all that scary sounding stuff in there as a lawyer’s way of saying “To do what we do, we need to make multiple copies of your videos from server to server, and to make it available for redistribution.”

You Tube has no interest in stealing you stuff. They plan to make money with eyes, not with reselling numa numa videos.