However, I do agree with much of the rest of the article:
Most of these platforms offer a simple trade off, distribution, storage,
membership in a community and an audience in exchange for advertising next to your content. You provide the reason for coming to the site, they provide the infrastructure. This situation however mirrors the current exploitation of artists in many other fields; you get an opportunity at a slice of the pie but you must provide your work for free or almost nothing just to prove yourself. It's like being on permanent provisional employment. "We (might) make you famous, just give us your talent and we'll see."
the exploitative nature of many 'UGC'-businesses, as outlined here, does trouble me, and I think this needs to be examined, and alternative, 'fairer' business models proposed. However, (and I'm not massively familiar with the workings of the Free Software community, so this is a genuine, rather than rhetorical question), how do businesses based around Free Software differ in this respect? For instance, how much of the profit generated by companies such as IBM and Red Hat from Free Software products (both often trumpteded as massive commercial successes of Free Software) finds it's way back to the community of developers who made the software? Cheers, Tim On 5/30/07, Tim Cowlishaw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 5/30/07, graham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I liked this: > > http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/andrewl/news/freebeer/ [...snip....] From the article: Many of the new commercial media sharing sites offer highly restrictive > terms and conditions on their user contributions. The most dubious is that > of YouTube who state <http://www.youtube.com/t/terms> > > "…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." > I still don't quite understand (this conversation has happened before about the mySpace T+C's) how granting such a licence is incompatible with the use of a free or liberal licence - surely the point of using a liberal licence is that these permissions are granted to anyone, whether they be a google-owned video sharing website, or Joe H. Remixer, making that clause effectively redundant, as such permissions are already implied by the underlying licence on the work. I guess it could be a potential problem for copyleft (youtube could make a (c) derivative work from the licenced work), but, beyond this, doesn't impact the licence in any notable way. Cheers, Tim
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