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Troublesome clause in terms of service
Hi,
Everything in the terms of service (http://pbwiki.com/content/termsofservice) looks great. It essentially says I own everything that's added to my PBWiki. However, the following clause seems inconsistent with everything around it and makes me think I should pull everything off my site so that I won't lose intellectual property on my wiki. Can someone please explain the purpose and meaning of this clause? If I have information in a private wiki, does this give the company ownership and/or the right to distribute this information? Should I explicitly copyright my wiki pages? Does this clause override that copyright?
I'm hesitant to continue with my subscription without clarification. Thanks. Here's the clause:
"However, to enable Company to provide the pbwiki Service, you grant Company a worldwide and fully sub-licensable license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform, and publicly display your User Submissions (in whole or in part) in any format or medium now known or later developed."
Everything in the terms of service (http://pbwiki.com/content/termsofservice) looks great. It essentially says I own everything that's added to my PBWiki. However, the following clause seems inconsistent with everything around it and makes me think I should pull everything off my site so that I won't lose intellectual property on my wiki. Can someone please explain the purpose and meaning of this clause? If I have information in a private wiki, does this give the company ownership and/or the right to distribute this information? Should I explicitly copyright my wiki pages? Does this clause override that copyright?
I'm hesitant to continue with my subscription without clarification. Thanks. Here's the clause:
"However, to enable Company to provide the pbwiki Service, you grant Company a worldwide and fully sub-licensable license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform, and publicly display your User Submissions (in whole or in part) in any format or medium now known or later developed."
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Inappropriate?Because you have the ability with PBwiki to have your wikis to be publicly viewable, we have to put in our TOS that we as the serving company have the right to serve your content.
Rest assured, we do not repackage content in any form or do anything with your content as a company.
Also if you have a private wiki we never look at your content or have any rights to do anything with your content. I can tell you that as a policy I (as an agent of PBwiki) cannot even look at your content on your private wiki.
Your content is your content. You can take it with you at any time and we do not do anything with your content in any form. -
Inappropriate?Let me explain this clause and why we put it in there -- the clause does *not* give PBwiki ownership of your material, override your copyright, etc.
What it does do is give us the right to redistribute your wiki in the way that you asked us to. So if you upload your latest screenplay idea to a private wiki and then share that wiki with your friend, you shouldn't be able to sue PBwiki for making a copy for your friend. So we have to make sure we have permission from you to to share the content you put on your wiki with other people on the wiki, and that's what PBwiki asks for in that clause.
Let me know if you have any more questions; sometimes working through this legal mumbo-jumbo can hurt your head! I know, because I worked with lawyers for days to produce the terms you see! (And the first version of what they gave me was many pages longer and scarier.)1 Comment
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Thanks. I appreciate your response. This makes good sense. It just seems the verbiage in that clause is too inclusive and could more clearly indicate the pass through scenario you describe.
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