{"id":15654,"date":"2014-01-28T02:57:35","date_gmt":"2014-01-28T02:57:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2014\/01\/28\/letyoursoul-acacophony-fyeahcopyright\/"},"modified":"2015-02-20T20:20:31","modified_gmt":"2015-02-20T20:20:31","slug":"letyoursoul-acacophony-fyeahcopyright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2014\/01\/28\/letyoursoul-acacophony-fyeahcopyright\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-15654 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2014\/01\/28\/letyoursoul-acacophony-fyeahcopyright\/attachment\/15655\/'><img width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/files\/2014\/01\/tumblr_n01301eMeK1s7c5nyo1_1280-150x150.png\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2014\/01\/28\/letyoursoul-acacophony-fyeahcopyright\/ive-set-it-on-fire-because-its-not-true\/'><img width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/files\/2014\/01\/tumblr_n01301eMeK1s7c5nyo2_400-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"gallery-1-15656\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/files\/2014\/01\/tumblr_n01301eMeK1s7c5nyo2_400-150x150.jpg 150w, http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/files\/2014\/01\/tumblr_n01301eMeK1s7c5nyo2_400-372x372.jpg 372w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<figcaption class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-15656'>\n\t\t\t\tI&#8217;ve set it on fire because it&#8217;s not true. \n\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/letyoursoul.tumblr.com\/post\/74791482855\" class=\"tumblr_blog\">letyoursoul<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/acacophony.tumblr.com\/post\/74777463920\/fyeahcopyright-dont-let-misinterpretations-of\">acacophony<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/fyeahcopyright.tumblr.com\/post\/74649408697\/dont-let-misinterpretations-of-the-proposed\">fyeahcopyright<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Don\u2019t let misinterpretations of the proposed updates to Tumblr\u2019s Terms of Use keep you from tumblr-ing. \u00a0(And please check the end of this post re psychfacts\u2019 truthfulness.)<\/p>\n<p>We were away all weekend at a Harry Potter thing at Universal, and came back to an Ask box and email in-box filled with questions about the <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/tumblr\/policy\/compare\/2cfe3c8668...adfff367b5#files_bucket\">updates to tumblr\u2019s Terms of Use<\/a>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/staff.tumblr.com\/post\/74407154392\/its-been-almost-two-years-since-we-last-updated\">(and staff post about it)<\/a>, and in a project that reminds us of the times we explained changes to the LiveJournal Terms of Use (sometimes not terrible, sometimes head-deskingly awful, which is why so many aren\u2019t there much anymore), as well as those of Yahool, MySpace and yes, AOL when Usenet became accessible via their proprietary system.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In other words, we\u2019ve been trying to reduce panic (or, alternatively, foster it) for longer than some of you have been alive.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Rather than tackle each Ask and email separately, we\u2019ll go through some of the more significant rumors, and invite any follow-up Asks at any time &#8211; but we also note that none of this is legal advice, and the copyright laws of your country will vary at least slightly from those in the US.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Will tumblr now own all the copyright in everything I post or add to a reblogged post?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>No. <\/em>Tumblr has (always? If not always then at least for the last three years) held a license to host, share, distribute and do certain other things with any content you post. Tumblr could not exist if it didn\u2019t hold those licenses. Tumblr exists so people can reblog and share content!<\/p>\n<p><strong>You &#8211; yes you &#8211; own the copyright to any original work you post on tumblr (photos, poems, songs) also many if not all of the original elements in your fanworks. You own those rights pretty much as soon as \u00a0you create those works.\u00a0<\/strong>You hold all the copyright &#8211; and Tumblr needs you to license some of those rights to them so they can show your content to the world. \u00a0They make copies by backing up the site on backup servers; they distribute copies by allowing others to see what you\u2019ve posted, and then others make copies by reblogging what you\u2019ve posted.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>If you don\u2019t want people to reblog what you\u2019ve posted, don\u2019t post it on tumblr. If you do want people to reblog what you\u2019ve posted, they need a license to do so. To put it simply, the Tumblr ToU contains those licenses. It contains them now and it will continue to do so.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why did the Community Guidelines change from \u201cauthorized\u201d to \u201callowed\u201d re posting things copyrighted by other people?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We hope it\u2019s because Tumblr loves fanworks and realizes their importance on the site and to its users.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>If something is authorized, then you\u2019ve been given explicit or implicit permission to do it. If something is allowed, then that might be the case &#8211;\u00a0<em>or<\/em> the law might allow you to do it. In other words, I\u2019m not authorized by JK Rowling or any of her designees to write Harry Potter fanfic; they haven\u2019t given me explicit permission. I am, however, allowed by US copyright law to write Harry Potter fanfic for a number of reasons (transformative works, fair use, laches). Tumblr is now saying that if I am allowed to post something, even if I am not authorized to post it, their Community Guidelines say it\u2019s fine.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>SQUEE!<\/p>\n<p><strong>BUT WHAT ABOUT <a href=\"http:\/\/24.media.tumblr.com\/ed6bcab072fab90aff23e13af162c8ea\/tumblr_mzxv4iaIVj1sqi7ieo3_1280.png\">THIS<\/a>, FYEAHCOPYRIGHT?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/24.media.tumblr.com\/ed6bcab072fab90aff23e13af162c8ea\/tumblr_mzxv4iaIVj1sqi7ieo3_1280.png\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>This isn\u2019t true, and it isn\u2019t true because they aren\u2019t saying they own your copyright <\/strong>(and as we explain below, little-to-no uncopyrighted work is posted to tumblr)<strong>.<\/strong> They are not saying they <em>own<\/em> any of the content you post. They, in fact, explicitly say<em> they do not own<\/em> any of the content you post.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>At line 140 in Section 6 of the ToU, it says this:\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Subscribers retain ownership and\/or other applicable rights in Subscriber Content.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>That means that subscribers retain whatever rights they have when they put something on Tumblr.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span><strong>Subscriber Content<\/strong> is defined in the Agreement as Subscriber-submitted\/transferred\/provided \u201cvideo, audio, photographs,\u00a0<\/span>images, illustrations, animations, logos, tools, written posts, replies, comments, information, data, text, software, scripts, executable files, graphics, Themes and interactive features.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In other words, you submit\/transfer\/provide, you <em>still own\u00a0<\/em>what you already owned (ie the text on a pic of Doge, your poetry and songs and fanfic and the photo of the hot Butterbeer you had for breakfast yesterday).<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/25.media.tumblr.com\/24747dbd74b1982ff4855a395bbf68e6\/tumblr_mzxv4iaIVj1sqi7ieo4_1280.png\">How true is this?<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Copyright (in the US, where tumblr and Yahoo are located) attaches to a work &#8211; a photo, note, story, poem, song, video &#8211; as soon as that work is \u201cfixed\u201d &#8211; such as when it\u2019s written on paper, printed out or saved to a hard drive, the cloud or a USB stick &#8211; or when it\u2019s posted on a website. And it vests in the creator, unless that creator <em>assigns<\/em>\u00a0the copyright away. A license is not the same as an assignment &#8211; it means you\u2019re giving someone else some rights, but not all of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>WHY does tumblr keep a license to my stuff after I delete my blog and go away?!?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Because someone else may have reblogged it in the meantime. That\u2019s how tumblr works, and why it\u2019s different from sites like MySpace, or how LiveJournal used to be. If someone reblogs your content while your account is live, they have a copy of it &#8211; sometimes with their comments on the post or in tags &#8211; and to use tumblr the way it was created to be used, the way it has been used for years, they need to be able to hold on to a license to keep using content you submitted to tumblr.\u00a0<br \/>If you don\u2019t want tumblr users to reblog your stuff or even host it after you leave or delete it, host it offsite and link to it or embed it. Then you keep more control over the content itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>But what about commercialization! I don\u2019t want anyone commercializing my stuff!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Given how tumblr exists, you can\u2019t stop other tumblr users from reblogging your stuff on tumblr, or linking to it from other sites.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>There are commercial sites with accounts on tumblr. Tumblr and Yahoo are for-profit companies. Tumblr and Yahoo have been profiting off of user-posted\/submitted content since said content was first submitted.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s how the sites work, and why they exist.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But even if you are ok with Tumblr and Yahoo making money off of your content, what about other sites &#8211; those \u201cthird parties\u201d? They could be anyone! You might not like them!<\/p>\n<p>True. But as long as they are on tumblr, they can reblog your posts, images, videos, stories, etc &#8211; and they can put ads on them, or link back to their site which has ads, or put a link that gets them more followers, etc.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re not comfortable with the theoretical possibility of that happening with your content, don\u2019t use Tumblr. That\u2019s your decision.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s been an aspect of Tumblr\u2019s platform for years, so please don\u2019t freak out that it\u2019s some sort of new and weird and evil sudden action.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>What is Poor Man\u2019s Copyright and should I do it with all my stuff right now so tumblr something-something?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Back in days of yore before computers and the internet allowed us to have a machine document the creation date\/time of a work, people would mail their original or a copy to themselves in a sealed- sometimes Notary-Public-certified &#8211; envelope because it would supposedly confirm the date on which something was created. As the US Copyright Office <a href=\"http:\/\/www.copyright.gov\/help\/faq\/faq-general.html\">says on their website<\/a>, there is \u201c<span>no provision in the copyright law regarding any such type of protection, and it is not a substitute for registration.\u201d Registration is a cool thing to do with stuff you\u2019ve created, and we\u2019ll do a post on it later this week, but whether you have it or not won\u2019t impact anything re tumblr\u2019s current or proposed Terms of Use.\u00a0<\/span><span><br \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Kudos and thanks to basilintime for a <a href=\"http:\/\/basilintime.tumblr.com\/post\/74606065739\">fantastic summary<\/a> of the changes with much less tl;dr than our post.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>As of now the panic-generating images posted by psychfacts\u2019 tumblr have almost 60,000 Notes &#8211; a bunch of them explain the ToU and contradict the panic, but please reblog this so our (admittedly tl;dr) analysis can be out there.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>ETA re Psychfacts:\u00a0<\/strong>We don\u2019t know if they\u2019re trying a social experiment on tumblr users, or if they just think it\u2019s funny to post lies and see how many reblogs they get.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>We do know this: Many if not all of the \u201cscientific\u201d terms mentioned in the images on psychfacts\u2019 posts are fake.\u00a0<span>&#8220;Hexodermic radiation&#8221;? &#8220;Kemblen cycle&#8221;? &#8220;Sutoamephrine&#8221;? <strong>NONE of it exists.<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>It is possible that Psychfacts is experimenting on tumblr users to see how many reblogs they can get for made-up content that\u2019s scary, in contrast to how many reblogs they can get for made-up content that\u2019s soothing or cheerful. If that\u2019s their intention, then they\u2019ve managed over 60,000 reblogs for the scary versus an average close to twenty for things that are not. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>It\u2019s possible they\u2019re making stuff up for some other reason. We have no idea. But they are not honest in their posts, and they are deceptive in their post re the tumblr ToU. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>THANK YOU. I\u2019ve been seeing that graph go around and I knew it was crap but didn\u2019t have the time and patience to explain it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Holy fucking hell thank you for making this post<\/p>\n<p>Tumblr\u2019s mad bandwagon freak outs over things that just aren\u2019t even a real thing REALLY BOTHER ME.  Everyone calm down :p<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>letyoursoul: acacophony: fyeahcopyright: Don\u2019t let misinterpretations of the proposed updates to Tumblr\u2019s Terms of Use keep you from tumblr-ing. \u00a0(And please check the end of this post re psychfacts\u2019 truthfulness.) We were away all weekend at a Harry Potter thing at Universal, and came back to an Ask box and email in-box filled with questions &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2014\/01\/28\/letyoursoul-acacophony-fyeahcopyright\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\"><\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[51],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15654"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15654"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15657,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15654\/revisions\/15657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}