[IMPORTANT] Revision to the Terms of Use, with creative work especially in mind

Darragh

Hey all, I'd have had this to you far sooner if I could have, but recent events haven't been kind to my to do list. This is in particular relation to this thread about our Terms of Use, and I'm using a new thread to both show you our revisions, answer your feedback and get your opinion on what we've done.

The previous (existing) TOU feedback:

Many people expressed dissatisfaction (both in this forum and in Feedback) at some of the wording in the Tersm, particularly around "creative material" (a terms I'm using here to describe your work). It was felt that we were trying to take ownership away from you, that we were looking for copyright over your images and basically that the whole thing was unclear.

Following your feedback, we have made changes, as below. I've highlighted in bold, and underlined for emphasis, sections I think are particularly relevant to yourselves:

Posting on Boards.ie
7: The content you post on Boards.ie

You are solely responsible for your conduct and any Material that you submit, post, and/or display on Boards.ie. You agree not to post Material contrary to these Terms of Use.

We may, but are not obliged to, remove or limit access to Material from any user which breaches these Terms of Use.

You own all of the Material you post on Boards.ie and we do not claim ownership of that Materal. However, we need your permission to be able to display that Material and in some cases to modify it for best display – for different browsers, for our mobile site, and so on.

Consequently, by posting any Material on or through Boards.ie, you grant us a limited licence to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute such Material.

The license you grant to us is non-exclusive, royalty free and fully paid, sub-licensable, and worldwide. This licence applies only to use of the Material for the purpose of providing the Boards.ie service.

From time to time we may seek to use users’ Material for the purpose of advertising or marketing Boards.ie. However we will not use your Material for this purpose without your prior express written permission.

You are responsible for making sure that you have all rights to what you post, including the rights necessary for you to grant the foregoing licences to same.

You represent and warrant that: (i) you own the Material posted by you or otherwise have the right to grant the licence set forth in this section, and (ii) the posting of the Material does not violate the privacy rights, publicity rights, copyrights, contract rights or any other rights of any person.

You agree to pay for all royalties, fees, and any other monies owing any person by reason of any Material posted by you to or through Boards.ie.

In order to ensure that threads and conversations are not disrupted, we do not generally remove Material which is uploaded to us. Consequently, you agree that your Material displayed on Boards.ie may continue to appear on Boards.ie, even after you have terminated your user privileges or have had your user privileges terminated by Boards.ie.

However, we understand that you may wish to remove certain types of original creative Material (such as your photographs, drawings, videos, short stories, architectural plans, poetry and the like) from time to time.

Consequently if for any reason you decide that you no longer wish to have your original creative Material displayed on Boards.ie then we will delete it provided that this does not have a significant negative impact on the structure of the thread it features in.

For example, we will not delete a work put up for constructive criticism as to do so would make the posts which respond meaningless. To have original creative Material deleted, please contact the relevant forum moderator with a direct link to the relevant item and your request. We will delete it within 10 working days of your request, as far as reasonably possible.

Please note that deletion of original creative Material applies only to Material you have uploaded to us. If you have posted a link on Boards.ie to Material hosted elsewhere (such as Flickr or YouTube) then as we are not the hosts you will have to contact that other site to have that Material deleted.

Because community standards vary and individuals sometimes choose not to comply with our policies and guidelines, in the process of using Boards.ie, you may be exposed to content that you find offensive or objectionable. You can report such content to us using the Report Post feature.

We cannot guarantee that other users will not use the ideas and information that you share. Therefore, if you have an idea or information that you would like to keep confidential and/or don't want others to use, you must not post it on Boards.ie. We are not responsible for a user's misuse or misappropriation of any content or information you post on the Site.

7.1 Feedback, suggestions and submissions about Boards.ie

From time to time users contact us with feedback, suggestions and submissions about Boards.ie and how to improve the site and services we offer. We welcome your input, and the following terms ensure that we can use your contributions to improve Boards.ie.

You do not have to submit anything to us about Boards.ie, but if you do you acknowledge and agree that any questions, comments, suggestions, ideas, feedback, or any other submissions to us which may improve our products, services, or offerings shall become our property unless otherwise agreed by us.

By making a submission to us about Boards.ie, you grant a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual, unlimited, assignable, sublicenseable, fully paid up and royalty free right to us to copy, prepare derivative works from, improve, distribute, publish, remove, retain, add, and use and commercialise, in any way now known or in the future discovered, anything that you submit to us, without any further consent, notice and/or compensation to you or to any third parties.

If you do not want to grant us the rights set out above, please do not make submissions to us about Boards.ie.


8. Links to and content of third party sites

8.2 Third Party Content

The inclusion of any content from other sites, either quoted directly or linked to (“Third Party Content”) on Boards.ie does not imply our ownership, affiliation or endorsement of such Third Party Content.

You understand that by using Boards.ie you may be exposed to Third Party Content that is offensive, indecent or objectionable.

Because we do not control third party sites, you agree that we are not responsible for any such Third Party Content and that this is the sole responsibility of the person from which such Third Party Content originated, and we have no obligation to monitor such Third Party Content.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, we reserve the right, but shall have no obligation, to pre-screen, filter, remove, refuse to accept, post, display or transmit any Third Party Content in whole or part at any time for any reason or no reason with or without notice and with no liability of any kind.

9. Intellectual property

All website design, text, graphics, the selection and arrangement thereof and all software are copyright Boards.ie Ltd., except in relation to Adverts.ie where all such materials are copyright Adverts Marketing Ltd., unless otherwise indicated. All rights reserved.

These do not include Materials which are the property of advertisers or users.

How we listened to you: (I've tried to pull out the most important posts from the 196 over on this thread)

We have clarified "submissions" to be about Boards.ie and not just general posts. We have also clarified our "rights" regarding content you link to (e.g. Flickr or Pix.ie photos) and what we need from yourselves in order to display it. [This was raised here and here and here]

We have taken advice over removal of your work, if you request it (We will do it, where reasonably possible (i.e. If a few hundred members sent in a few hundred requests each, we wouldn't be able to guarantee we'd do it all within the specified time frame). URL="http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=63805996&postcount=158"]This was raised here[/URL] and [URL="http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=63805883&postcount=159"]here[/URL

We have stated that we will ask for written permission to use your work. URL="http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=63800470&postcount=114"]Raised primarily here[/URL

We have removed the "perpetual" and "irrevocable" element of the license you grant us. URL="http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=63815526&postcount=173"]This was raised here[/URL] and [URL="http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=63785494&postcount=104"]primarily here[/URL I had previously posted about the Boards.ie blog which was raised here and here.


Going forward:

I'll be posting a similar thread in Feedback later, and I will take the feedback from same in the implementation of the revised TOU. I'm thinking we will put them into effect from February 22 - giving people a genuine good opportunity to have a read, a think and then agree or not agree (which means they stop posting on Boards.ie

Can you let me know what you think of these? Is there anything I have missed? Anything you'd like more clarity on? Anything you'd like explained?

FOr those wondering where we got these, these TOU were drawn up by TJ McIntyre working with ourselves. TJ is a Lecturer in the School of Law, University College Dublin, Consultant with Merrion Legal Solicitors and chairman of civil rights group Digital Rights Ireland.

Your input is appreciated, thank you

Darragh

PopeBuckfastXVI

All looks good to me, thanks for all the hard work you have done at your end Darragh & boards.

CabanSail

Thanks for all the work done on this Darragh.

The way I read it, it seems to formalise what we are doing now. The previous version probably would not have affected things while we have the present Admin, but these things can change & there was the potential for abuse of Intellectual Property. This revised edition seems to address the concerns that were raised while giving Boards.ie the rights required to operate the site.

tl/dr Seems a fair compromise taking on board the feedback. Good Job.

masteroftherealm

To me as the photographer looks much much better, really appreciate taking on the suggestions. Next time I meet my Copy Lawyer Ill pass it by him but by the looks of it I think that it looks good.

pixbyjohn

Darragh,
I am extremely happy with the Terms of Use. I fully appreciate the work gone into wording these conditions. With the amount of users it is always a very difficult task to cover every eventuality but I think you have managed it very well.
Thank you for your time.
John

AnCatDubh

Can't say I understand it fully but generally from what I can see, I like em. Simply put, I trust boards to be honourable. Some would say that's naive but i'm rarely naive so I reckon i'm safe.

one/two suggestions -

Please note that deletion of original creative Material applies only to Material you have uploaded to us. If you have posted a link on Boards.ie to Material hosted elsewhere (such as Flickr or YouTube) then as we are not the hosts you will have to contact that other site to have that Material deleted.

A user may still request for their post to be removed. They could presumably post an image or set of images for C&C, with what we often consider necessary - some context to the image. If a user either takes the hump for any particular reason or is driven to taking the hump, then they may remove the original content from flickr or youtube but they may also request for the posted details (text) to be removed.

Can the big long sentence be simplified perhaps (7.1.)

By making a submission to us about Boards.ie, you grant a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual, unlimited, assignable, sublicenseable, fully paid up and royalty free right to us to copy, prepare derivative works from, improve, distribute, publish, remove, retain, add, and use and commercialise, in any way now known or in the future discovered, anything that you submit to us, without any further consent, notice and/or compensation to you or to any third parties.

If everything which has been comma'd in this sentence could be summarised by a phrase and then expand the summary phrase by means of a * or the like I think it may be easier to understand/read.

On the subject of honour of which I believe the majority of decent boards users implicitly trust boards inc., this works because of the structure and while it has its quirks and issues, it is, by enlarge noble at least in its intent (includes userbase, volunteers, staffers, ideologists). Thus is it possible for it to be indicated (ring fenced) that any future changes to the TOU will explicitly relate to postings from such a period as would be clearly notified in advance to the user base. (not sure if i've explained this one too well, but i think i'm suggesting explicit in non retrospective application of any future changes)

Anyway, overall good job done imho.

Thank you.

ThOnda

Great work. We understood quite quickly what you needed to post and state in the conditions, but the formulation was too vague.
I think it is very clear now. Thank you for it, thanks for all the work you put into the Boards.ie.

trishw78

looks like we're all in agreement with this version... If this is the case I shall Unsticky this thread by the end of the week.