Sunday, June 29, 2008

Weasal Lawyering on Copyrights at The Union?


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The Union newspaper recently removed a photo of mine which I had copyrighted, both very lightly in the image area, and in the file area reserved for such purposes. I had noted with joy in their section on the "new Website" that while huckstering their own staff images via prints available, they had made it clear that the submitted readers photos were, "available for the readers' viewing pleasure," which I assumed meant that the copyrights of the submitters were being respected.

When the photo was removed, Zuri Berry sent me a link to the website where the legalese "weaselese" is stored. There I read the following:

" 5. Proprietary Rights in Content
By displaying or posting any messages, text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, profiles, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, "Content") on or through the Services, you hereby grant us, a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense through unlimited levels of sublicenses) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute such Content on and through the Services. This license will terminate when you remove such Content from the Services. Notwithstanding the foregoing, a back-up or residual copy of the Content posted by you may remain on back-up servers after you have removed the Content from the Services, and we retain the rights to those copies. You represent and warrant that: (i) you own the Content posted by you or otherwise have the right to grant the license set forth in this section, and (ii) the posting of your Content does not violate the privacy rights, publicity rights, copyrights, contract rights or any other rights of any person. You agree to pay for all royalties, fees, and any other monies owed to any person by reason of any Content posted by you."

Note very carefully the following weasel mode:

"This license will terminate when you remove such Content from the Services. Notwithstanding the foregoing, a back-up or residual copy of the Content posted by you may remain on back-up servers after you have removed the Content from the Services, and we retain the rights to those copies. "

The first part of the state sounds like you get to retain your copyrights, as long as you remove it from the services. While the right hand giveth, the left immediately takes it away, in the final clause. For all practical purposes, they retain the copyrights under all circumstances. They make it sound like it is "just a backup" but the way it reads, they retain the rights.

This sucks.

BTW, all my other submitted photos had the visual copyrights posted on them, and never caused a problem. Could their be a problem with the content, a tiedyed hippydude flashing the "V" signs against a backdrop of the American flag?

Here is The Union copyright link:

http://apps.theunion.com/utils/uiincludes/termsofuse.php.







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