Comment by Spittie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Spittie | Hacker News Reader

It's probably standard legalese, but I find it funny that in the TOS (https://www.takeitapart.com/terms-of-use) there is

    You acknowledge that (i) you own and are solely 
    responsible for the content that you submit, post, or 
    transmit

And

    You grant TakeItApart a non-exclusive, royalty-free, 
    transferable, sublicensable, worldwide license to use, 
    store, display, delete, reproduce, modify, create 
    derivative works from, perform, and distribute your 
    user content for the purposes of operating, developing, 
    providing, promoting, and using our Site. Nothing in 
    these Terms shall restrict our legal rights to user 
    content.

Pretty much a "we own the content you submit, but if this bother someone, it's your fault and you'll face the aftermatch".

That said, it looks like a nice site, a crowdsourced iFixIt. Maybe the next time I take something apart I'll remember to take some photos (I'd me more willing to contribute if the TOS wasn't so restrictive, but since I still own my content I don't mind so much").

> That said, it looks like a nice site, a crowdsourced iFixIt.

We're already crowd-sourced! http://www.ifixit.com/Contribute Only about half our guides are staff-created.

> (I'd me more willing to contribute if the TOS wasn't so restrictive, but since I still own my content I don't mind so much"

Good news! Everything on iFixit is CC BY-NC-SA: http://www.ifixit.com/Info/Licensing (but you still own your content).

This is a complete mis-characterization of the license.

1) It explicitly says "you own the content you submit."

2) It says you agree to let TakeItApart use the content you submit, in ways and purposes any website, forum, or blog would be expected and required to use content posted for general public display. This agreement does not limit you from posting the same content elsewhere (non-exclusive). Finally, you don't expect TakeItApart to pay you for this content (royalty-free).

3) Any expectation that a website should take unlimited legal liability for the content posted by the general public is unwarranted and unreasonable.

That's actually a _relatively_ new underpinning of online publishing law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicatio...

Not quite 'own' as the license is non-exclusive. Also interesting that the usual word 'perpetual' is missing.

This is so they can generate thumbnails of images.

Yes, seriously.

One of the TakeItAparts here. We're certainly open to refining our Terms if others have been down a similar path before and have advice. My personal belief is to grant the user permissive rights, but we still need to worry about liability. We're certainly open to revisions.

Could you use a Creative Commons licensing scheme like Stack Exchange?

It may be worthwhile for us to look into it, but everyone has their own favorite creative commons license so we risk offending people if we choose just one, and choosing multiple would likely complicate things for us in the future. IANAL, but some CC licenses, like one prohibiting commercial use are difficult to use/enforce since usage is difficult to define. Another issue is that if a creator wishes to regain control of a work, CC makes it difficult since the license is (as far as it was explained to me) perpetual over the term of copyright protection.

We have plans to add guide forking and merging in the future, so the licensing will need to allow derivative works. Our current license allows that while trying to still be reasonably fair to content creators (in particular due to the non-exclusivity). Since many car guides may begin by lifting the hood and removing the dust cover, they should be able to all fork from the same starting images, for example. There's also thumbnail generation, marketing screenshots of pages with guide images, etc.

So what if the original creator of a guide that has been forked and edited multiple times decides to revoke the license? Wouldn't you have to delete all forks and edits?

That's why FOSS and CC licenses are perpetual; to avoid building on potentially shifting sands.

Great question. We'll be in touch with our lawyer.

You might want to take a look at what Wikis do in terms of CC licensing.

Care to elaborate on specifics?

You should just adopt the license structure that wikipedia has. If it works for them, there's no reason it won't work for you.

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