Twitter

[Straf]

Twitter have announced a change to their terms of service from 2nd October. I had a quick look through and this jumped out at me:

By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed). This license authorizes us to make your Content available to the rest of the world and to let others do the same.

I don't know if this was here before but it looks like as with just about all social media they have decided anything posted to the platform comes with an open licence for them to do with whatever they like. Royalty-free with the right to sublicense gives them the right to sell, lease or whatever they like. In theory posting a map to Twitter hands them all the rights to that map and they can sell it to, for example HBO, for $10m and the original artist wouldn't get a bean. Or a potato if they don't like beans.

You agree that this license includes the right for Twitter to provide, promote, and improve the Services and to make Content submitted to or through the Services available to other companies, organizations or individuals for the syndication, broadcast, distribution, promotion or publication of such Content on other media and services, subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use. Such additional uses by Twitter, or other companies, organizations or individuals, may be made with no compensation paid to you with respect to the Content that you submit, post, transmit or otherwise make available through the Services.

This gives Twitter the right to use someone's creation for promoting their own services or the services of other companies that they grant a license to.

Twitter has an evolving set of rules for how ecosystem partners can interact with your Content on the Services. These rules exist to enable an open ecosystem with your rights in mind. You understand that we may modify or adapt your Content as it is distributed, syndicated, published, or broadcast by us and our partners and/or make changes to your Content in order to adapt the Content to different media. You represent and warrant that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the rights granted herein to any Content that you submit.

When you submit something to Twitter you are granting them indemnity by declaring that you own the exclusive rights to whatever you post so if someone sues HBO/Twitter for copyright infringement then they aren't liable but you are.


I think the CG Twitter account should be carefully reviewed especially where showcasing of commissioned works are concerned. I'd be well narked if I had made a map for a book that had been put on Twitter and the publishing company paid Twitter royalties instead of me.

[Wired]

Just another reason why I don't use Twitter, I guess.

[Mouse]

Thanks for the warning, Straf

When I give work away to others (like my textures, parchments and the 1 map I have so far in my Battle Map album, for instance) I make it clearly known to the world that the work is free, and that people can do what they like with it. You can even use the textures in maps that you intend to sell. That's why I upload them. I mean - why else would I upload a plain square of texture?

I have put all the things I wish to give away in the albums listed below in my signature.

The rest of my work is mine and I retain full copyright. Only the Guild may show any of my finished maps on FB - the permission being implicit the moment I create a Finished Map thread. Anyone else should ask before they take.

I am aware that quite a few of my maps appear in other places online without my permission, so please - if anyone has decided to show any of them on Twitter, I would very much appreciate it if they could be removed as soon as possible.

Thank you

[Voolf]

Wow, this is just outrageous. After stating that they will just take everything you post and can license or sell or use for pomotion, they say this

These rules exist to enable an open ecosystem with your rights in mind.

yeah in mind.. they just said they dont care about my intelectual property at all, and will do what they please with it.

I wonder what will happen in a situation when i post a map with a permission. Let's say i will upload Straf's map with his permission and then Twitter will sell/license this map to third party. They will not read the note that i am not the onwer. I know that because they set their terms of service in this way. Not to care just copy evrything they find useful.
Straf can then sue the third party for using his map without a permission. Third party will pass this to Twitter, Twitter will say that i agreed to give them the rights, but i cannot give them any rights because they weren't mine to begin with and i mention that. What then ? Is it and impasse or by saying this

You represent and warrant that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the rights granted herein to any Content that you submit.

they mean that you just simply CAN NOT upload ANYTHING that isn't yours? That would be ridiculous, because there are so many people everyday uploading so many pictures they don't own...

[Straf]

I interpret it as "We have the right to monetise anything you post and get to keep the $$$ haha! But if anyone sues us it's you who'll be thrown to the lions."

[Voolf]

Eventually yes, it seem so, because in the end if you post anything you agreeing with their terms.
I never really used Twitter so i don't care, but it is a cheap move from their side. I wish all users would read that and decide to leave that platform. That would teach them a lesson, but i know it won't happen.

[Mouse]

The real problem here is that there are so many people online who borrow things and re-upload them all over the place without the originator even being aware that its going on. So your maps may end up on Twitter whether you want them to or not.

[Voolf]

I know Mouse. It is not my problem though.

All i am saying is that Twitter's terms of use is a scumbag move. They know 5% of all people reads terms of use and they made their TOS this way for a clear purpose to use everything they have in their database for free. They can even get money from it.

Of course if one of my map lands there it is still ok for me. This is internet, and everything is going everywhere. You can't stop it. The real problems start if somebody starts to use your property to gain profit. If Twitter license my map further to monetize it i can chase down the third party. What they will have to do is to cease exposing my map, but any penalty, fine i will be going after will be redirect to the person who uploaded my map on Twitter.

For me it's actually BAD if a Twitter user got sued. I don't have anything against people showing my work on their twitter/facebook etc. Because this expose my work to more people (assuming work is signed). The guy who uploaded my map could be even a fan of my work. I don't want to punish him/her, just for uloading my map. Not all people steal and claim it is theirs. Basicly it is a free advertisement for me.

So if a twitter user doesn't claim its his/her i don't want to go after that guy. I want to go after Twitter because they copyied and licensed my work claming they have rights to do so. They don't, but they cleverly composed they TOS to be lazy bastards and just legally steal everything what lands in their database.

[Mouse]

I see your point, Voolf, and that's what probably most mappers would agree on. But I'm not trying to sell myself as a mapper, so I don't need the publicity.

I used to get really aeriated about all this stuff when people kept 'borrowing' my book illustrations and encouraging others to do likewise by publishing hyperlinks straight into my albums from FB pages without any credit or explanation - encouraging vast numbers of other people to take without permission, and to make up stuff for themselves that had absolutely nothing to do with the story my maps were actually about... These days I never show the maps that really matter to me. That way they don't get all bashed up and bent out of shape before I even have a chance to use them myself for the originally intended purpose - as my own original book illustrations.

I have recently been sticking to community projects and challenges for the most part - the fun-mapping end of my creativity, and nothing to do with my books.

The only exception to that general rule is my current Challenge entry. While being one of my fun maps, it has also set the seed of a novel in my imagination. I'm not going to have time to finish it for the Challenge, but I will after that, and probably work at it till what you currently see is a mere cartoon compared to the finished piece, but that one will definitely be private till publication day

[ChickPea]

I am no lawyer, so take my comments as you will....

These terms are pretty standard for social media entities. For twitter in particular, it also states right at the top of their terms of service "You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. What’s yours is yours — you own your Content (and your photos and videos are part of the Content)." They ask for the rights to reproduce etc etc because tweets show up everywhere. Twitter's API allows you to embed tweets in a web site, and twitter needs permission for that. Also, have you ever watched a TV show and they show tweets on screen? Again, twitter needs the rights to reproduce your tweets. They're not selling your pics. They are granting themselves the right to monetise your content by showing ads to the people who view your tweets. It's my understanding that this is pretty much boilerplate legal speak for social media sites, but again IANAL.

For those unaware, I run the Guild's twitter account, and it's my understanding that I can tweet anything that gets upload here. It's in the Guild's terms of service: "Any contributions to this site are assumed to be the property of the poster and may not be used without permission, except for use by The Operators for promotion of the Website." That bit about promotion of the website allows us to reuse the content on the Guild's social media accounts. Now we obviously don't want to make anyone unhappy, but if these terms of service are not to your liking, you're going to have to raise the issue with Robbie. (This is above my pay grade!) For what it's worth, I get tweets & direct messages from people on a semi-regular basis saying (to paraphrase) "I love your stuff, can you make me a map?" I direct these people to the Mapmaking Requests forum and they can deal with the artists direct there. Raising the profile of the Guild benefits everyone, I feel. More eyeballs on our stuff = more members and a new influx of talent, and more commissions (for those who take them) from authors/gamemakers etc who may never have encountered the site before. I should state also that I don't generally tweet the full size images you post (unless they're small to start with). They're shrunk down, quite significantly sometimes, so it's not your original hi-res pic that's shared.

If people aren't happy with Guild posting their stuff to FB and Twitter, then I guess we need to have a conversation about that, because right now J.Edward and I work on the understanding that we can share whatever we choose, and the site's TOS validate our actions. It's my opinion that it's not the Guild's social media sites that are causing the issue with people's maps showing up everywhere. The people who are sharing without permission are coming direct to the Guild and taking the pics from source. Unfortunately, whether you like it or not, once your art's posted in a public forum, you can wave bye-bye to control over it. It's simply the nature of the internet. What you can do is watermark your images. Redrobes has got a nice script to help with that. For many, the lack of credit is the issue, not the sharing, so it's wise to do what you can to protect your images.