New Photobucket Terms of Use
Discussion
Just went to access my Photobucket account and was invited to read and accept their new terms of use.
I use Photobucket to host the pics I include in my PH posts, so although my album is private I do technically share content.
These three paragraphs caught my attention:
• Remember: if you share it from the Site, it's no longer private, even if you marked it "private."
• If you make your Content public, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to copy, distribute, publicly perform (e.g., stream it), publicly display (e.g., post it elsewhere), reproduce and create derivative works from it (meaning things based on it), anywhere, whether in print or any kind of electronic version that exists now or later developed, for any purpose, including a commercial purpose.
• You are also giving other Users the right to copy, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and create derivative works from it via the Site or third party websites or applications (for example, via services allowing Users to order prints of Content or t-shirts and similar items containing Content, and via social media websites).
So if I'm reading this correctly, any time I post a pic on PH I'll be giving Photobucket and every single one of their users the right to use my image for pretty much any purpose they choose.
To say I'm not keen on this would be an understatement, so what are my options? Do I stop updating my Photobucket content and hope that the original terms of use protect it? Do I add large watermarks to everything to make them unusable, or should I find an alternative hosting service without the rights grab?
I use Photobucket to host the pics I include in my PH posts, so although my album is private I do technically share content.
These three paragraphs caught my attention:
• Remember: if you share it from the Site, it's no longer private, even if you marked it "private."
• If you make your Content public, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to copy, distribute, publicly perform (e.g., stream it), publicly display (e.g., post it elsewhere), reproduce and create derivative works from it (meaning things based on it), anywhere, whether in print or any kind of electronic version that exists now or later developed, for any purpose, including a commercial purpose.
• You are also giving other Users the right to copy, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and create derivative works from it via the Site or third party websites or applications (for example, via services allowing Users to order prints of Content or t-shirts and similar items containing Content, and via social media websites).
So if I'm reading this correctly, any time I post a pic on PH I'll be giving Photobucket and every single one of their users the right to use my image for pretty much any purpose they choose.
To say I'm not keen on this would be an understatement, so what are my options? Do I stop updating my Photobucket content and hope that the original terms of use protect it? Do I add large watermarks to everything to make them unusable, or should I find an alternative hosting service without the rights grab?
S. Gonzales Esq. said:
So if I'm reading this correctly, any time I post a pic on PH I'll be giving Photobucket and every single one of their users the right to use my image for pretty much any purpose they choose.
mcflurry said:
Once you've shown a picture on any web site, it's "out there", albeit for less scrupulous users 
Being 'out there' to be taken by the unscrupulous is certainly not the same thing as freely giving permission for anyone to do what they want with it.Given the massive size of this rights grab I'm amazed that there's so little comment on it out there on the web.
It's often not intended to be quite as bad as the wording looks, a lot of online services - even things like web mail providers - have had to update to include similar terms. It's because over the last few years the legal position has been clarified that sending a web page (or image or document) to a users web browser is publishing.
So say you are an image hoster, you need the right to publish so people can view the image, give this to a lawyer and it quickly expands, for example it could be argued that resizing the image is modifying it.
Flickr for example has similar clauses (8a, 8b), but they try to make it clear that these rights are only to provide the service.
So say you are an image hoster, you need the right to publish so people can view the image, give this to a lawyer and it quickly expands, for example it could be argued that resizing the image is modifying it.
Flickr for example has similar clauses (8a, 8b), but they try to make it clear that these rights are only to provide the service.
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