RSSPhotoshop Express' botched terms of service to be revised
By Tim Conneally | Published March 31, 2008, 5:40 PM
Shortly after opening to the public, Adobe's Photoshop Express web-based photo editor came under scrutiny for a questionable clause in its Terms of Use.
The passage in question is the following: "Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed."
This passage differs greatly from two other photo sites' terms of service, Photobucket and Flickr.
"Photobucket does not claim any ownership rights in any User Content that you choose to post to the Site...However, by posting or making User Content available through the Site or via the Services, you hereby grant to Photobucket a nonexclusive, royalty-free, transferable, worldwide license to use, copy, modify, prepare derivative works from, distribute, publicly display and publicly perform (whether by means of a digital audio transmission or otherwise) and process your User Content, or any part of it, solely on and through the Site and Services... "
Flickr: "With respect to Content you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of Yahoo! Groups, the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Service solely for the purposes of providing and promoting the specific Yahoo! Group to which such Content was submitted or made available. This license exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Service and will terminate at the time you remove or Yahoo! removes such Content from the Service."
Note the crucial segment within Adobe's agreement that is absent from other sites: "..derive revenue or other remuneration from..."
Technically, this allows Adobe to sell every single photo that has been uploaded to its site. Contacted by several media outlets over the potential use of this clause, Adobe representatives acknowledged that its inclusion was, in fact, an oversight.
Adobe told blogger John Nack that the company's legal team will be posting a revised set of terms, as the clause leaves the door open for "things we would never do with content."
Talk about covering your butt! Look at Fox Network over a comercials inbetween a big football game where Fox borroed a picture from a ladies personal web site of a dog in a Santa suit and then had to pay the lady for the use of the photo because they did not contact her in the first place... they had even added a Santa hat to the dog. Everyone wants something for nothing if you ask me. Adobe is only trying to line their pockets with somebody else's work by having the public upload their images to the Adobe site and Adobe in turn can turn around and make a profit on these images and are not wanting to share the profit(s) on these images with the actual owner.
I also use Photoshop quite often, I've been using it for the last 10 years and I am quite aware of the fact that I can not simply use any image I want if it is to be used in some sort of advertising with out contacting the actual owner of the image. Adobe needs to follow this law as well in the use of images that they have no rights to.
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|Having paid for Photoshop CS2 and using it daily, I would not be inclined to use a web edition, for issues not least of all of connectivity. Photoshop is expensive but then its designed for designers and a web version would be perhaps useful only for the novices or hobbyists.
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|Even though I'm an atheist, I'm inclined to want to quote the "Let him who is without sin throw the first stone"
Are you guys all claiming that you have NEVER EVER made an error related to your own profession?
Everyone is so quick to find fault with others.
Sigh
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|What ever happened to business ethics? I'd love to meet the technical writer who was tasked with the duty of producing this ethically questionable EULA.
The first thing they teach you at college, in both business and technical writing is clarity and ethics. This document seems to be lacking both.
To paraphrase, the agreement you make by using their web-based service is this:
"Adobe doesn't necessarily own the rights to your intellectual property, but they're legally free to do whatever they choose with it."
I'd love to have that kind of right with things that I download. Could you imagine the feedback from the RIAA alone?
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|Surprised are you ? What were your expecting from Adobe regarding care for their customers ?
And, by the way, who in his sane mind would use web apps for sensitive stuff (let alone use web apps) ?
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|Oversight? No way. I am pretty sure it was on purpose. I do not believe in coincidences in such cases.
OT, I think the site should mention this action: http://boycottcreative.com/BoycottCreative.html
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|And one more thing: "Adobe told blogger John Nack that the company's legal team will be posting a revised set of terms, as the clause leaves the door open for "things we would never do with content."
Well, I signed up 5 minutes ago and the agreement is still unchanged. So much for concern about the problem. It is easier to talk everywhere that the company is going to change the agreement than actually change it? Is it soooooo hard?
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|That's OK, I'll download an illegal copy and crack it for thier ignorance.
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|Good luck with that.
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|my dear, we are talking Adobe's Photoshop Express web-based photo editor, a WEB BASED photo editor, it's not a programme, it's a website
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|sure... I hate reading those long and boring terms of service. Look what could have happened if we missed it though... Company's think it's ok to take consumers for a ride these days. No more trust.
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