Technology & MSG

MySpace Still Retains Limited License

Sep 30th, 2006 by Alex

Previously I noted that MySpace Sucks, particularly because they reserved the rights to the user’s content. It appears that they have changed their tune slightly, although probably not due to user complaints.

Since my original article a few months back, Geoffrey Grahn sent me an email, informing me that MySpace has altered their Terms and Conditions. It appears that they’ve loosened up the license terms a bit. Here’s what’s changed in the section entitled “Proprietary Rights in Content on MySpace.com.”

The following is an excerpt — emphasis mine — as of March 17, 2006.

“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.”

Since then, a bit of editing has been done; deleted jargon appears in striked face, newly inserted jargon appears in bold face.

“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 MySpace Services, you hereby grant to MySpace.com~~, a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, worldwide~~limited 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 solely on and through the MySpace Services.”

All of this results in this new excerpt. This is the new section of the same document as it appears, as of June 15, 2006. Emphasis is still mine.

“By displaying or publishing (”posting”) any Content on or through the MySpace Services, you hereby grant to MySpace.com a limited license to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute such Content solely on and through the MySpace Services.”

So what has changed? No longer is the license royalty-free, nor does MySpace retain the right to sublicense endlessly, adapt, copy or translate content. Oddly they also struck their right to transmit and store the content, which you would think would be required for the contact to be served up to clients. As much as I’d like to believe this is a good thing done on behalf of the users, it’s more likely that large-scale advertisers that have MySpace pages wouldn’t be willing to cough up the cash for a custom user page if MySpace had the rights to sublicense (or otherwise mess with) their brand name, logos, and other media.

Even with all of this cleaning up and loosening legal jargon, I doubt that small bands would be able to collects any royalties to which they may be entitled.

The end result? MySpace still sucks, but has taken steps to protect its media partners.