Twitter

[Redrobes]

Copyright and trademarks are different things. If they trademarked cyberpunk then it would probably come with a font, colour and style not just the word because the word is too generic. Apple were not allowed to sell music for a long while due to the trademark of apple music who did the beatles. Cadbury's have trademarked purple for chocolate and kit kat tried it on recently with trying to trademark two rows of chocolate bar next to one another. But you can use purple and make twin bar chocolate bars and you can talk about cyperpunk the genre and probably make cyberpunk products so long as the product is not confusing with that done by the trademark registrar.

It used to be the case the microsoft used to spam a lot of ads for "Word", just "Word" not "Word for Windows". Heck, even Windows is a generic term too. All of it has become daft since the age of search engines when you type in "word" into google and expect your product to be the top billing entry. Since there are 40 million cyberpunk entries on google then their product is going to be lost in the haystack.

[Mouse]

Oh I seeee, Azelor - thanks

And I agree, Waldronate. Documents like that need to be trashed and completely re-written every year, instead of constantly modified (or should that be mudified?)

EDIT: Red, I think I'm going to have to hire someone to go through my drafts to fish out all these suspect words and replace them with something different (and hopefully better).

[Voolf]

The terms of service do, theoretically, allow the organization to do anything that they want with uploaded content. However (and it's a big however), doing so would destroy the only thing that lets the services survive: trust of the users. If users start getting abused and decide that they don't like it, they might start departing those services.

How odd it is that the bigger an organisation gets the more idiotic their TOS becomes, until it is little more than a foggy patch of disjointed contradictions.

Unfortunately, the more power you have and the more money it is much easier to just take even more very easily. Out of many incidents (should happen) i think they may be caught very few times. If they will, first they have money so they can sweep that unger the rug very fast and very quietly. Second more important, Twitter and Facebook have millions of users that already can't imagine life without using them. No matter if they do something they should not, people won't stop using those Social media services.
Facebook had already couple of 'dark' cases. I don't believe it lost much trust of the users.

Mark Zuckerberg has graciously informed us that privacy is dead. Now things are moving just a little bit over to the "all your work are belong to us" zone.

That is so true, but i strongly believe it is the people who use Facebook, Twitter etc. fault this happened. I don't understand how can you share your life and private matters with entire world on everyday basis. That is beyond my understanding.

A little bit off topic but...
There was a couple of experments in Poland when i guy looked up throgh facebook couple of persons who sometimes saw near his place of living. He found out that their facebook account are set to public so he gathered evey single info on them. Like going to dentist, buying new dog, failing important exam etc. After memorizing most private things, he confronted those persons in real life with a normal conversation like:
"Hey Kate, how's you new dog? I am so sorry to hear you failed the exam, but dont worry" etc. The girl was of course shocked asking how a stranger can know those things, she thought he was a stalker. In the end guy said: "If you make your life public to the world, why are you sho shoked strangers know all about you?"

Quite nice way to say, you are doing it wrong, but i think the girl haven't drawn any conclusions from that "encounter".

[Mouse]

Not sure if I said this earlier, but I only have an FB account so I can respond directly to compliments and questions about the maps uploaded to the Guild FB page. I've friended a couple of people who wanted to be my friend, but they were probably totally shocked by my utter lack of interaction, other than to 'like' some of the things they do and say.

Never been one to chat about my own completely boring days.

[waldronate]

Never forget the unofficial motto of Google: "Don't be evil: unless it's profitable." Unfortunately, a lot of enthusiastic people neglected to include the second part in the early days.

[Voolf]

Not sure if I said this earlier, but I only have an FB account so I can respond directly to compliments and questions about the maps uploaded to the Guild FB page. I've friended a couple of people who wanted to be my friend, but they were probably totally shocked by my utter lack of interaction, other than to 'like' some of the things they do and say.

Never been one to chat about my own completely boring days.

Yeap, totally understand.
Just a word of clarification. I am not saying that using facebook is bad thing. It is the way you use it. For me facebook is a very powerfull business adverstisement platform with many uses. People can utilize FB in many ways, but just write your personal stuff and clicking 'like' under every post just because his my firend....

I have been staying away from FB for many years and now i just use it to promote my drawings.

Btw. This topic became hot.... what did you do Straf.

[Straf]

Ah yes there was a music shop in Newcastle called Windows.

The reverse is also true though. A hoover became a generic term for a vacuum cleaner. I believe there are places in the USA where Coke is a generic term for soda/pop. "Coke please?" "What would you like?" "7UP." When a brand name becomes the vernacular could a brand owner sue a retailer for selling a customer a different brand? What if I asked a sales assistant to see their range of hoovers and ended up walking away with a Panasonic?

Anyway back to copyright. I suppose Twitter's reputation would be severely hit if they were taking user creations and sub-licensing them. Also I've spoken to a publisher about maps for novels and in some cases they'll use the map the author provided if it is good or they'll use it as a guide to have their preferred artist make it. Publishers hardly ever use author generated cover work. There could be no doubt that the world the author created (or the game maker, etc) is theirs and theirs alone. Possessing a map doesn't imply ownership of the land represented by the map. If there was any dispute over a piece of artwork the publisher could simply have their own version made. If a commissioned map doesn't make it into print it might put the cartographer's nose out of joint a bit but their map may well have been the difference between getting the artist published or not.

It may well be a different story with games though. If a game is based on a map and that map has been sublicensed to another game company there could well be a conflict there. I have noticed that the Twitter ToS doesn't mention perpetuity which implies that consent may be withdrawn at any time, probably subject to reasonable notice.

[Mouse]

Yeap, totally understand.
Just a word of clarification. I am not saying that using facebook is bad thing. It is the way you use it. For me facebook is a very powerfull business adverstisement platform with many uses. People can utilize FB in many ways, but just write your personal stuff and clicking 'like' under every post just because his my firend....

I have been staying away from FB for many years and now i just use it to promote my drawings.

Btw. This topic became hot.... what did you do Straf.

I think that's probably a very sensible thing to do. I've been told that when I publish I will have to become a lot more active on FB and Twitter. Its something that's making me feel a bit ill. It creeps me out quite a bit that people who like my books will also want to know the 'low down' about my private life. What business is it of theirs what colour my socks are, or how tidy/untidy my flat is, or what I think of Pink Floyd? Not even my mother knows any of that about me, so why should anyone else?

I might only sell 10 copies, but I think I'd prefer to be one of the reclusive writers who go live on a Scottish Island somewhere and refuse to be interviewed.

As for Straf? He just seems to find interesting things to talk about

I get the thing about publishers using or not using an author's maps and cover designs, but of all likelihood I won't be using an actual publisher. Kindle give some help, but not a lot, so I'm doing both those things myself - cover and map.

[Straf]

@ Voolf - I was once sat in the canteen area in a place of work when this conversation unfolded between a ms A (office temp) and a ms B (office busybody):

B (looking on phone): I seem to have lost you on Facebook. Are we still connected?
A: I don't know, I'll add you back.
Me: I don't add anyone I work with on social media. I think it's so intrusive.
B: Oh don't be silly. It's just a bit of fun that's all.
B to A: "It's rude to whisper"? Who was whispering and who are you calling rude?

Also @Voolf the conversation just opened and it seems very grown up too

[LordEntrails]

This is nothing new. I remember similar TOS and outrage back when Geocities was hot. Similar issues occur with ever social media platform I'm aware of. Part of the problem is simple that the platform doesn't want to be held liable for any type of misunderstanding or variation in the interpretation of laws.

I don't want to get into the details, because I'm no lawyer or expert on the topic, but if someone posts an image on Twitter, how can Twitter send out the tweet if they don't have the right to distribute it? I'm sure they could right TOS that are more narrowly defined to protect artists, but that would probably be at the risk of their own liability. Something that I can understand they would not want to do. After all, for most of us, it is a free platform, it makes no sense for them to open themselves up to liability.