BEWARE of MYSPACE!!

Janacopolis

Just wondering if anybody else knows anything about this, my brother sent me this email the other day, let me know what you think:


Recieved from Billy Bragg's press office. Watch yourself if you are putting your own music on Myspace!

"Someone who we work with was bright enough to read the small print of the MySpace terms and conditions and found that once an artist posts up any content (including songs), it then belongs to My Space (AKA Rupert Murdoch) and they can do what they want with it, throughout the world without payng the artist. Because of this we've had to take all of Billy's songs down. I'm working on getting small clips put up instead, but in the meantime please visit www.billybragg.com to listen to and download songs.

Below is the offending clause. We are hoping to start a small revolution (in true Bragg style) to try and put a stop to this. You can do your bit by posting out a bulletin to all your friends, esp artists, and badgering Tom with e-mails letting him know how unfair this clause is (not least because you can't hear Billy on here anymore!).

Thanks for your help and support. The amazing thing about My Space is how fast we can all communicate so if we all do our bit we should be able to change this.

Take Care

Sarah, Bragg Office xx

TERMS: (as of 17th March 2006)
>
> Quote:
> By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content, messages, text,
> files, images, photos, video, sounds, profiles, works of authorship,
> or any other materials (collectively, "Content") on or through the
> Services, you hereby grant to MySpace.com, a non-exclusive, fully-
> paid and royalty-free, worldwide license (with the right to
> sublicense through unlimited levels of sublicensees) to use, copy,
> modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store,
> reproduce, transmit, and distribute such Content on and through the
> Services. This license will terminate at the time you remove such
> Content from the Services. Notwithstanding the foregoing, a back-up
> or residual copy of the Content posted by you may remain on the
> MySpace.com servers after you have removed the Content from the
> Services, and MySpace.com retains the rights to those copies."


:eek:

Goodshape

You could take that to simply mean you're giving them permission to host and serve your 'content' -- which is presumably what you want them to be doing.

And "This license will terminate at the time you remove such Content from the Services." Fair enough.

Although -- "Notwithstanding the foregoing, a back-up or residual copy of the Content posted by you may remain on the MySpace.com servers after you have removed the Content from the Services, and MySpace.com retains the rights to those copies" <-- that sounds like a bit of a grey area.

Personally I wouldn't put anything on a site like MySpace if retaining copyright were an issue. I'd consider it more or less public domain.

miju

that was the case but myspace backed down and changed their terms & conditions quicksmart

Spicy Lauren

miju wrote:

that was the case but myspace backed down and changed their terms & conditions quicksmart

Could someone post out the new terms and conditions please. Would be interesting to see what has changed. I'm meant to put my tunes up in less than 2 weeks...

miju

just have a look at them at the bottom of the page, anyways it's not some evil conspriacy or anything

think about it for a minute, myspace would be in a legal quagmire if they didnt have sometime like that in their T+C , basically what it translates into in realistic terms is your allowing myspace to distribute your music via myspace and myspace are allowing you to use their servers

if myspace have to make a retrospective restoration then that may include files previously uploaded to the myspace servers hence the other clause in the T + C

myspace cant just say you uploaded soemthing to our servers we own it now, there's such thing as copyright and intellectual copyright etc

though this does highlight why it's good to register yer songs with IMRO