Re: The TOS and other issues facing Fan Content Makers

by The Creators, on Sat Aug 11, 2007 7:18 pm (hyperlinks added by ~mm)

Hey Everyone,

Sorry it's taken us a little bit to address your questions. We were incredibly busy with the 12 in 12 and preparations for Season 2. Greg and I took a little time and did some thinking. The current TOS was something we slapped together when we were rushing to launch the new website. We are working on a new TOS that reflects how we feel about content creation going forward. Here are our thoughts, and what we propose:

1) We need to have ownership and control of the content we make (videos, the website, graphics, logos, etc.) because we are building company and that's how this company will have value. We need it to have value to attract investment so we can keep making cool shows for you to watch

2) We want to encourage you guys to create characters and stories, make videos, and upload them to our website, but we need to be able to "use" those videos since they will be on our website and we will be monetizing the website.

We love creative commons and a lot of you, like immortal1, have suggested that we use it. We are planning on using creative commons licensing in the new TOS. Here is what we propose:

1) All the videos that we create and upload will be covered by an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. This means that you are free to remix our videos, make your own videos with our content, and use them for non-commercial uses. When you make videos using our content (the actual video content or ideas), those videos will automatically have an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license, as will all derivatives of your videos.

2) All ORIGINAL videos that you create and upload that are completely independent of our intellectual property will be covered by an Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. This means that everyone else is free to remix those videos, make their own derivative works, and use them for commercial and non-commercial uses. This is the equivalent of an "Open Source" license.

3) All other content on the website will be covered by "standard" TOS language. We will own all comments, messages, etc. This is a requirement for companies that run websites.

4) You will be responsible for not using copyright infringing material

5) I know a lot of you are thinking about our original statement that we want content creators to be paid for their work. That statement is still very important to us. Unfortunately for a variety of reasons we chose to stop using Revver, but in the future we would like some built in revenue system. Please bear with us. The license covering your ORIGINAL works, Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license, allows you to monetize those videos anywhere you want and we encourage you to do so. Our hope is that YouTube will adopt a model like Revver in the near future, and it is our belief that our fans will be the first to reap the rewards.

We think that this allows us to protect our videos and our intellectual property, but also allows you to download the videos and make remixes and tribute videos. It also allows you to create your own characters and stories on our website and contribute to the LG15 Universe. Note that we understand that you can't download videos from YouTube right now. We are working on a solution (either continuing to use Revver in addition to YouTube, or finding some other service) so you can legally download and remix our videos.

Let us know your thoughts.

Miles/Greg

http://www.lg15.com/lonelygirl15/forum/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=12687&p=476677&hilit=#p476677
---
virginian9000 said...

I posted this in the forum, but I also wanted to post it here. Maybe I'm totally off-base. Let me know. . .

I know there was some concern from the maddison atkins team about the TOS. Does this allow the maddison atkins team to continue without you suing them later? or suing anyone later.

Let me elaborate. You say that everyone's videos will be theirs as long as they use their original ideas. If someone does a successful ARG or story, and decides to go out on their own making money, will you come back and sue them later because they may have vaguely used some concept or something that you might feel is your ideas.

Fan ARGs and fan offshoots and storylines have been a mainstay of the lg15 world. It has been part of the fun over this past year of watching lg15, as it was not only the lg15 story that continued, but the fan stuff as well. This TOS issue has stifled that.

Fix it.