“the submitting user grants [company] the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, and display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed, all subject to the terms of any applicable license.”

A good example is this comment on the Slashdot story last week about Adobe launching an online version of Photoshop Express. I’ve had to deal with these kind of complaints for the web properties I’m responsible for, but my annoyance is nothing new. The first time I remember coming across complaints about these kind of terms is almost a decade ago when Yahoo! took over Geocities. It annoyed me even back then when I was just a humble ed tech trainer, not a product manager responsible for honest-to-goodness web applications.
Although I am not a lawyer and you definitely shouldn’t take legal advice from me, let me explain to you what the heck is going on here: it’s called the Internet.

When you upload your content from your computer to [insert web-based application here] you are transferring that content from your computer to the centrally-hosted web application that, presumably, will reproduce that content when it serves it up for display to you or someone else on the web page. This is is commonly known as publishing in web parlance, a way to distribute content over the World Wide Web. Etc. etc. Terms starting to sound familiar?
The Web works by making copies of content and transmitting/distributing those copies all over hell and back anytime someone views a web page, not to mention all the caching of copies. Any company that’s going to get into the business of helping you put content of any sort on the web needs to get your permission to do fling that content all over the globe.
If the vendor didn’t explicitly make the license to do that part of the terms, then some other bozo is going to come along and say “I uploaded a photo to your photo sharing site, and you had the unmitigated gall to — horror or horrors — transmit my content to the web browser of someone, and in the process of doing so allowed them to cache a copy of that photo on their own computer! How dare you! I’m suing you for copyright infringement, Mr. Vendor!” The type of terms like those quoted above are about how the web works and making sure that some litigious jackass doesn’t sue the vendor over doing what’s necessary for a web app to exist. It’s not about “stealing copyright.”
So, you “stealing copyright” bozos, please stop getting your knickers in a twist. Put your tinfoil hat back on and wait by the front door for the black helicopters.
Oh, by the way, the quoted terms above? They’re quoted from the Slashdot Terms of Service. ;-)

A Dec. 30 Style & Arts column incorrectly said that the
recording industry “maintains that it is illegal for someone who has
legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.” In a
copyright-infringement lawsuit, the industry’s lawyer argued that the
actions of an Arizona man, the defendant, were illegal because the songs were located in a
“shared folder” on his computer for distribution on a peer-to-peer
network.

At least they corrected it. But it reminds me that the standard print newspaper practice of burying corrections someplace deep in the paper (and, in the case, website) is as atrocious as it has always been. Corrections, especially for regular columns, should run in the same space that the original ran and run above the lede, not at the bottom of the column.

On The Patry Copyright Blog, he writes:

On page 15 of the brief, we find the flashpoint:
“Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs’ recordings into the compressed
.mp3 format AND they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the
authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs.” I have capitalized the word “and” because it is here that the RIAA is making the point that placing the mp3 files into the share folder is what makes the copy unauthorized. The RIAA
is not saying that the mere format copying of a CD to an mp3 file that
resides only on one’s hard drive and is never shared is infringement.
This is a huge distinction and is surprising the Post didn’t understand
it.

Pretty much spot on the argument I was making. Vindicated! :-)

[I]n an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

The industry’s lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are “unauthorized copies” of copyrighted recordings.

The problem is that’s not what the brief says at all.

I was as outraged as you probably are when I first read about this brief a few weeks ago. So I looked up the Atlantic v. Howell brief. It was easy to find through Google, but here’s a link for you: Plaintiff’s supplemental brief in support of their motion for summary judgment pursuant to court’s order of October 3, 2007. (PDF format).
Read it for yourself. When you read the brief it quickly becomes clear this isn’t a case about converting CDs to MP3s, but a case about someone who plopped his converted MP3’s into the Kazaa file-sharing service. What the brief actually says is:

Defendant admitted that he converted these soundrecordings from their original format to the .mp3 format for his and his wife’s use. . . . Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs’ recording into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs. Moreover, Defendant had no authorization to distribute Plaintiffs’ copyrighted recordings from his KaZaA shared folder.” (p. 15)

Note the “and” in that second sentence. This is boolean logic at its simplest. Not once in this brief — not once — is it even remotely implied that “copy[ing] their CDs onto their computers,” as Fisher said, is an illegal act in and of itself. The entire case revolves around taking those MP3s and making them available to other people via the Kazaa file-sharing service. Had Howell just converted his CDs to MP3s and dropped them into a location on his computer that wasn’t shared with millions of other users, we might assume that there wouldn’t be a lawsuit taking place.
In other words, in the Atlantic v. Howell brief, the lawyers for the RIAA are not objecting to a user copying CDs onto a computer, but to a user putting the ripped audio files into a shared folder that he knew would distribute it via the Kazaa file-sharing service — precisely what the RIAA has been objecting to for nearly a decade.
I’m no apologist for the RIAA; I loathe their policies and their tactics. But loathing the RIAA isn’t an excuse for letting sloppy, misleading, and irresponsible reporting go unnoticed. I haven’t seen any coverage of this case that has actually reported the full context, i.e. that the RIAA was objecting to the converted files in question being shared over the Kazaa service.
There’s nothing new — or newly nefarious — here. The only new thing here is that the defense lawyers are being much more clever this time around about taking language about “unauthorized copies” out of context and spinning it to their advantage in the media and blogosphere. And the media and bloggers are eagerly taking the bait without doing the simple legwork that any resepectable journalist, blogger, or thinking person should do.

In the past few years, fans leaving some concerts have discovered a souvenir far better than a T-shirt: a live recording of the show they just attended. Bands including the Allman Brothers, moe. and Billy Idol have sold instant concert discs, and the Pixies and the Doors plan to launch similar programs this summer. The recording-and-burning company DiscLive estimated on April 12th that it would gross $500,000 selling live discs this spring alone.
But in a move expected to severely limit the industry, Clear Channel Entertainment has bought the patent from the technology’s inventors and now claims to own the exclusive right to sell concert CDs after shows. The company, which is the biggest concert promoter in the world, says the patent covers its 130 venues along with every other venue in the country.

Gah! Clear Channel, not file-sharing, should be held responsible for declining audio CD sales because they’re radio division is almost singlehandedly responsible for the lack of diverse programming on commercial radio. This move by their concert promotion division only confirms my low opinion of them.

In this world where we have consumer choices to make, Scoble argues that our best buy is to pick the lock-in company that will have the largest number of licensees.
That’s just about the worst choice you can make.
If I’m going to protect my investment in digital music, my best choice is clearly to invest in buying music in a format that anyone can make a player for.

Bravo.

Broadcast-flag technology works like this: Digital TV signals that are broadcast over the air, rather than transmitted via cable or satellite, will include an invisible data tag — the broadcast flag — along with the picture and sound. By FCC fiat, any digital TV tuner built after July 1, 2005, must refuse to allow broadcast-flagged programs to be recorded in such a way that they can be redistributed in their high-definition format. You’ll be able to record Letterman tonight and watch him tomorrow but you won’t be able to e-mail a copy to your friends.

Link via Scripting News.