New Terms of Service Discussion

Join in the Discussion of the new LG15 TOS.

by immortal1
on Sat Sep 01, 2007 1:59 pm

I had some initial reactions last night about this post but decided to hold off until today so I could read the TOS with fresh eyes. Now that I've done that my first reactions have only been reinforced.

The biggest problem I see is that UVCs (User Video Creator as defined by the TOS) have control of their original work is they have "original" status but not if they have "derivative" status. First thing that pops out at me is the defintion of intellectual property.

"TOS wrote:Derivative Videos are videos that are derivative works of the intellectual property owned by lonelygirl15 and relating to the lonelygirl15 Series, Kate, or other Series Spin-Offs, including, but not limited to, ideas, characters, symbols, storylines, images, music, sounds, or video from the Series, Kate, or other Series Spin-Offs ("lonelygirl15 Intellectual Property")."

So what doesn't that cover? Let's say I make a video of a guy staking out a female teenager's house and suggest he is a watcher. Is that derivative? What if the girl turns out to be a vampire slayer? I mean who really is being derivative of who? Let's take Dr. Immant. Dr. Immant has a symbol at the end of his videos that represents the Order he represents. The symbol represents the unique history of the Order. The symbol can also be interpreted as representing a faction of the lg15 universe Order. It's no skin off my back to reveal that history, give a unique name to the Immant Universe Order and claim original status. Anyone else who hasn't used specific lg15 references can use the same method to sanitize their work of lg15 elements.

"TOS wrote:lonelygirl15 hereby grants all Registered Users a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty free, irrevocable license to make Derivative Videos using the lonelygirl15 Intellectual Property on the following conditions: 1) the Derivative Video is created and distributed for non-commercial purposes; 2) the Derivative Video is uploaded or submitted to the Website; 3) a link to the Website is included wherever and whenever a Derivative Video is distributed, posted, submitted, or uploaded anywhere other than the Website; and 4) other people can make their own Derivative Videos from your Derivative Video under the same terms and conditions as this license."

For the life of me I do not understand the logic of allowing this! First off, lonelygirl15 is allowing use of their IP for a number of reasons but to sum it up, however small or large-they get something out of it. What do UVCs of derivative works get when someone else uses their IP? The way I see it this encourages people to take short cuts and take advantage of others hard work and creativity.

Under this rule someone can create a Facility F (for FUBAR) adopt the look and feel of Facility J, attribute it back to FacilityJ through a link which will only give the appearance that FacilityJ is behind it and then proceed to either intentionally or unintentionally introduce something that doesn't make sense, reveal something that isn't what FacilityJ had planned or just do any of a number of things that would only hurt what Facility J has established.

The Flock was something written on the white board. I recognize that it represents the religious members of the Hymn of One and that is lg15 IP. Anyone can do a story about members of the Flock. Anyone can create characters for "new girls" in fact, I'm the one who encouraged that! However, my story revolves around a certain group within the Flock. My characters and that concept should be protected from use by someone else.

"The Creators wrote:As we have discussed, we are working on ways to allow people to monetize these Derivative Videos on our site."

I really don't like to talk about this. I think it sets up an unfair expectation. I've done a lot of research on revenue sharing and 1) very few people qualify for it and 2) it's not enough to sustain a production. Anyone who has a revver acct knows that. You guys know that, you put a paypal button on your site.

Unless you have a plan for promoting our vids so that we get tens of thousands of views or brokering product placement deals we shouldn't be talking about monetization- at least not give the impression that it will yield anything more than what people were getting with revver.

I really would have preferred more conversation in the TOS discussion thread.

Join in the Discussion of the new LG15 TOS.