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Findaway's new terms of service are unacceptable

mwl.io

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Re: Findaway's new terms of service are unacceptable

#11

Post by dannyw »

naitgacem wrote: post #6

I wonder how much of the highlighted clause you hereby grant Spotify a non-exclusive, transferable, sublicensable, royalty-free, fully paid, irrevocable, worldwide license to reproduce, make available, perform and display, translate, modify, create derivative works from (such as transcripts of User Content), distribute, and otherwise use any such User Content through any medium is actually necessary for the service t…

The latter is common place. For example, if a film photographer sells a photo, later the rights-purchaser can digitize it.

The advent of AI has obviously changed the game, but "you get to do whatever you want with my work for $XXX" is established.

The issue here is the payments are not $XXX, they are potentially pennies or zero.

Re: Findaway's new terms of service are unacceptable

#12

Post by roughly »

sneak wrote: post #2

I'm waiting for these sorts of unilateral "we have updated our terms of service, by doing nothing, you agree to these new terms" contractual edicts get eliminated as a whole class of behavior. I'm not a lawyer so I'm not sure if it stops when enough of them get invalidated in court, or ifwhen the legislature steps in. It's insane that it's accepted as normal that someone can send you an email with notice of a contrac…

I mean, the whole premise of end-user license agreements is insane - "By using our product, you, a technically and legally unsophisticated user, assert that you have read, understood, and agree to the 45 pages of legalese that we put in front of you in a 300x200px window, and we assert that we believe that you, a technically and legally unsophisticated user, fully understood that contract, despite our metrics collected on the length of time between it showing up on your screen and you hitting the 'Accept' button suggesting that you're some kind of hyper-optimized button-clicking robot."

It's very clear that that construct's been allowed to facilitate rapid business transactions over any particular legal clarity or protection, so I wouldn't expect this behavior to face any additional challenges.

Re: Findaway's new terms of service are unacceptable

#13

Post by nusl »

macksd wrote: post #8

I was just seeing something about this on social media - @laura_horowitz_narrator was talking about it and one of the commenters claim they have backpedaled and apologized for "confusing language" but I don't find the language confusing at all. If you're a lawyer and you're modifying an existing document to state these terms, what else could you possibly be meaning?

Their apology is more of a "Sorry, we'll find a way to screw you in an unmodified way but we'll make sure that you idiots will cry less about it this time."

Or they'll introduce softer changes, let everyone kinda chill out a bit, then clamp down on the same changes again when it's harder to move off-platform and users have little choice but to agree.

Re: Findaway's new terms of service are unacceptable

#16

Post by wrs »

HillRat wrote: post #4

If you've ever been involved in ToS drafting, you're used to customers panicking over clauses that you and your attorneys crafted to deal with pretty standard business requirements, such as granting adaptation rights so you can create thumbnails or summaries of user-generated content, for example. This ... is not that. This is facially overbroad, lacks any kind of even indicative usage limitations, and likely breaks…

“Training” in these things comes across differently than it did two years ago (i.e., employee training)! And what is “modeling” supposed to mean?

This actually reads much like the typical internet ToS of 20 years ago, before it became standard to say “only as needed to provide the specific services” because people started rightfully freaking out.

Especially in the media world with its history of repeatedly bilking artists out of royalties whenever a new format comes around, this is quite an insensitive move.

Re: Findaway's new terms of service are unacceptable

#17

Post by perihelions »

neuronexmachina wrote: post #9

This is tangential, but the author's audiobook "Savaged by Systemd" sounds hilariously bizarre: > The classic work of Linux satirical erotica, complete and unabridged, now a Tilted Windmill Press exclusive! > ... The latest trend Terry refuses? One adopted almost everywhere? Systemd, the replacement init. > So Systemd comes for Terry. > Wearing skin-tight leather pants.

And that's enough HN for today.

Re: Findaway's new terms of service are unacceptable

#18

Post by naitgacem »

dannyw wrote: post #11
naitgacem wrote: post #6

I wonder how much of the highlighted clause you hereby grant Spotify a non-exclusive, transferable, sublicensable, royalty-free, fully paid, irrevocable, worldwide license to reproduce, make available, perform and display, translate, modify, create derivative works from (such as transcripts of User Content), distribute, and otherwise use any such User Content through any medium is actually necessary for the service t…

The latter is common place. For example, if a film photographer sells a photo, later the rights-purchaser can digitize it. The advent of AI has obviously changed the game, but "you get to do whatever you want with my work for $XXX" is established. The issue here is the payments are not $XXX, they are potentially pennies or zero.

Indeed, I was thinking of the whole new AI mess going on when I wrote that. I guess it is indeed commonplace, but so is the

    by continuing to use this product you agree to whatever we wrote here
I believe legislature is the only way this has a hope of ever going away.

Re: Findaway's new terms of service are unacceptable

#19

Post by londons_explore »

SebFender wrote: post #3

"Accordingly, you hereby grant Spotify" what ever they want. Crazy.

In many countries, including the USA, if a business writes a contract containing something unreasonable, and the consumer signs it without reading or understanding it, then that clause (or maybe the whole contract) is invalid.

Re: Findaway's new terms of service are unacceptable

#20

Post by ziddoap »

macksd wrote: post #8

I was just seeing something about this on social media - @laura_horowitz_narrator was talking about it and one of the commenters claim they have backpedaled and apologized for "confusing language" but I don't find the language confusing at all. If you're a lawyer and you're modifying an existing document to state these terms, what else could you possibly be meaning?

Public-relation spin like that is almost as despicable as the original terms themselves.

The quoted clause, as you stated, was absolutely perfectly clear! There was no vagueness or room for confusion. They covered every possible way that they now have full control over the authors works.

The next draft will probably just have more legalese, and be spread out over multiple clauses of their already long (~7500 word) terms of service so that it's harder to point at it and say "gross".

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