Yahoo/Geocities IP Trouble

Doug Muth writes "There's an article in Wired about Yahoo taking over Geocities and how they now claim to own the intellectual rights to all webpages that users have on there. That's scary, since under this contract, anyone who has a page on Geocities no longer has the rights to what they have created. "

Take it easy!

First: This does not mean that "... anyone who has a page on Geocities no longer
has the rights to what they have created. "

It grants yahoo a perpetual, transferable & non-exclusive, sublicensable right to the content. This does not mean that the original author is not free to use or sell their content, though it means that in theory, yahoo, or one of their partners could sell the content themselves.

Second: Yahoo maintains that their intent is not to deprive authors of their rights, but rather to avoid lawsuits in the future. I am inclined to believe them and I think others should take them at their word as well.

This is not to say that people shouldn't complain vociferously to Yahoo about this new policy. It is sufficiently broad that it leaves the door open to future abuse and it needs amendmant.

Unfortunatly, even if they want to do the right thing, there is a long road ahead. This verbiage exists because current copyright conventions are not a good fit for the modern age.

The latest revision of the copyright conventions was supposed to take into account the realities of this modern age, but it is clearly a failure. It may or may not represent the interests of large copyright holders. It clearly fails to represent the interests of small copyright holders and the publising industry that has sprung up around them.

So, instead of antagonizing Yahoo, and their ilk, treat them as allies. They have the resources & economic interest to make a positive change.

Miffed.

Protecting themselves from lawsuits is one thing, but claiming complete rights over webpages? Sheer BS. I work in a Silicon Valley startup and my contract is less restrictive in regards to intellectual property than Yahoo's is (my company basically gets the right to use any ideas I come up with in any of its products, but does not claim the right to sell my ideas directly).

This Yahoo-Geocities thing is only the beginning of a bad trend. Has anyone looked at NSI's webpage lately? Or ordered a domain from them? They are trying to get customers to aquire the .net and .org address together with a .com purchase, in order to "triple your exposure". Back in my day, these suffixes actually meant something (eg: org = npo, com=commerical, net=network). It seems that logic and meaning has been tossed to the wind in order to make money.

The worst thing is, its all downhill from here. The governments are getting ready to dip their fingers into regulating the net. How long do you think they can stay away from the highly publicized and alluring money that is generated by e-commerce?

I think its time to make a new internet, one where crap like this doesn't happen. By keeping things seperate (eg: one nation wide network for video+voice, one for commerce, one for industry communications, one for research, and one for the individuals) everyone could end up happy.

So what does all this have to do with the original post or the first part of my message? Frankly, I'm not sure. I just realized that I have begun to ramble :).

Anyway, expect to see more shit like this happen in the future.

Re:I'm not buying it....

if they owned it before, then they own it now, but they can't just change it on people in midstream.

Not unless they state that the contract between the user and GeoCities can be amended at any time, which they probably do (and usualy saying that no notice has to be offered). I'm not sure how enforceable this is, in RL, but I suspect it would be difficult to even get them to court.

What if you put an bootleg copy of somebodys song in mp3 on your site, do they own it?? NO WAY!
What if you are talking about a Ford automobile? Do they own the Ford name?

Of course not. Basically, they state that you are responsible for any copyright/trademark/whatever infringement. Anything left after that they own. Sweet, innit?

GeoCities may be able to repost or redisplay your content, but for them to make a profit on it, mmmm, sounds like it could be LawyerCities to me.

Err... what do you think they are doing now? Giving out webpages out of the kindness of their hearts? Nope, they are selling ad space around your content. That's making a profit.

What they are saying now is that they can repackage that content into, say "a best of GeoCities" CD or something.

I find it ironic that people screaming about their IP rights when their sites are chock full of copyrighted images they scanned in, audio files they recorded off of videos and TV, and often buttons and other images they ripped off of other sites.

Whenever graphics artists complain that someone is ripping off their stuff, someone inevitably says "dude, take it as a compliment." Well, maybe you should take it as a compliment that Yahoo thinks they can make money off of your web page... What comes around, goes around.

Re:Take it easy!

Taking Yahoo at their word, I'd say their intent is not to deprive authors of their rights, but rather secure for Yahoo rights they feel they need...

Geocities is in the business of hosting web sites. This involves taking material written and copyrighted by J. Random Author and copying and distributing it all over the world. By copyright law, without a license to do so, Geocities would be breaking the law.

So they need a license to copy and distribute J. Random Author's pages.

Geocities also habitually modifies web pages to display advertising. Again, without a license, this violates the law if they distribute the result.

So that license also has to include the ability to modify the pages by J. Random Author that Geocities copies and distributes.

Furthermore, Geocities was just bought by Yahoo. If Yahoo bought Geocities lock, stock, and barrel, then the licenses they previously had presumably go with it. But now Yahoo owns those licenses. If Yahoo got tired of Geocities, it would want to sell Geocities, and the licenses with them. Suddenly, Yahoo wants "transferrable" licenses, so it can transfer them if need be.

Likewise, Yahoo might want to contract out the serving of Geocities pages, which means it would needs to sublicense the content.

So this means that Yahoo needs, to do the basic type of thing it has been doing, a transferrable, sublicensable license to copy, distribute, and modify the content posted on Geocities. It doesn't need an exclusive license, so it specifies that it wants a "non-exclusive" license.

Likewise, since they are just putting the pages up without prior review of the contents, they don't want to be held responsible for any content that is of questionable legality.

I'm sure that the remaining clauses can be justified as easily (I don't have them in front of me, so I can't come up with the justifications).

The problem is... While it allows Yahoo to do what they are currently doing, it also allows them to do a whole bunch more, stuff that J. Random Author might find objectionable.

I think what they wanted to do was something like:

"We respect that you, the author, have a valid copyright on the content of this page. As such, we need, from you, the legal right to provide that content on the WWW, with ads inserted by us, as we have always done, as well as the legal right to readjust how we serve those pages to best serve our business interests. At the same time, we also trust you to be in a position to give us those rights, and do not want to be involved in lawsuits concerning -your- right to say what you say on this page."

Would that intent be justifiable? I think that that intent is compatable with the contract and their statements concerning their intent.