Thoughts on Lonelygirl15's Terms of Service - 12th Street House

"I think it would be good for me if I had a complete list of everything the C's believe is their IP, and then we can know completely what is in bounds and out of bounds.

My final thought is that none of us (the LG15 Content creators) are making money. Not really. Revver isn't bringing in the dough for us. 1 in a thousand LG15 fan creations will become it's own production standing on it's own two feet. When that happens, how Greg and Miles fostered and invested in the relationship with ALL the fan creators will be revealed. Also, that is the point where we will truly see how the TOS will be utilized(if at all) by the C's."

For the full post, see this page

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Greg said...
We want Maddison Atkins and all other fan stories to continue as well! It is not our intent to stop anything. We need a TOS and some rules and we want them to be open and foster creativity.

We are confused by all the issues with our new proposal. It will let people make fan videos legally and make all the original stories they want. We need some protection for fan videos/derivative content. If we didn't, then someone could just write a new KateModern and sell it to some website. You know we can't do that.

With original stories, people can do whatever they want with them and make them commercial in any way they see fit. All we ask is that when they are uploaded/embedded on our site, we can still have advertising on our site around the videos. We are not going to make DVD's or do anything else with them that would take money out of the pocket of the content creator. To the contrary, we want to share the revenue generated from those videos and our site traffic through a revver type system.

Finally, we want to make sure that someone doesn't upload a video to our site and then sue us later claiming that we stole their idea.

This is not a corporate thing and we aren't trying to be difficult. We just want a great site with great fan content where everyone is happy.

Thanks and hopefully with our new TOS, calm will be restored and many more fan videos/original stories will be told. We more than anyone out there are all about fostering creativity and opportunities for aspiring filmmakers - it is who we are.

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virginian9000 said...
I am copying and pasting the Creators latest post here in my comment below. After reading this, I certainly feel a lot better about everything. My only hope is that the Maddison Atkins team does as well, and will start posting again. Here it is:

Hey everyone,

We have read all the posts and will take everyone's thoughts into account when we re-write our TOS.

One note about Jeromy's post. All of our ideas for Kate are 100% our ideas. We wrote and submitted a treatment to Bebo several months ago that included the storyline of a girl that has a blood test and can't remember the following events. Any similarity between Kate and redearth on our part is purely a coincidence.

However, Jeromy brings up a good point. Fan stories that are original or derivative might relate/overlap to the exact story we are telling. Are we to scrap weeks of writing/filming/editing if we see a fan video that has similar storylines to what we have already shot or where we want to take the story? Since the last thing we want to do is ban fan videos on our site, we really need a clear TOS that lets you make fan fiction or original stories and prevents us from being sued or ruining our production.

One final point. Based on the TOS, we would not be able to package your videos into a DVD without your permission. If we did that and you simply removed your videos from our site (either with a tool we will create or by asking BK), we would no longer be able to distribute the DVD's. With that in mind, please realize that we will not be making a DVD with your videos unless we reach out to you and get a license. This is the same reason why YouTube can't make a DVD with all of our videos. We would just pull them off the site and they would lose the ability to distribute the DVD.

Simply put, all we want to do is the following:

1) Let you make derivative/fan fic videos legally and distribute them anywhere non-commercially.
2) Create a system where you can be compensated for your derivative/fan fic videos on our site.
3) Have you upload original videos to our site and monetize those videos by banner ads, contests, or in-stream video advertising. To do this last part, we need a license to distribute your videos to the world and to monetize them. We also want you to be able to monetize original videos on our site however you want - sell your own brand integration or come up with some form of revenue sharing system.

We think this is fair and benefits all of us. We are working on a new TOS. When it is done, we welcome your feedback.

Thanks,

Greg