[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> Re: Rhizome.org Member Agreement

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

Mark,
Thanks for your note. I hardly mean to pick on Rhizome.org -- as
a photographer and writer, I appreciate what you're doing, and believe
the world is a better place because of your efforts.

On Mon, Nov 19, 2001 at 03:30:55PM -0800, Mark Tribe wrote:
> You grant Rhizome.org a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual
> license to: (i) store Your Content on Rhizome.org's servers; (ii)  
> distribute Your Content on the Rhizome.org web site and through email
> lists; and (iii) reproduce, publish, perform, display, adapt, distribute
> or otherwise make available Your Content in web sites, books, CD-ROMs or
> any other form or medium whatsoever, whether now known or as may hereafter
> be developed.

The above is the default language, and I understand folks can opt-out,
but as we keep hearing in debates over Microsoft suckfulness, defaults
matter, and many folks won't read the details of the contract. How many
folks have read shrink-wrap licenses in detail?

For the folks who don't read the language, they may find books, CDROMs,
etc. with their own content on -- and for which the artist makes no
money ("royalty-free") -- competing with their own work for which they
do make money.

> You're right to be sceptical, Declan, but I don't think it's fair to
> compare us to Yahoo! (a publicly-traded for-profit company). Rhizome is a
> not-for-profit organization. The purpose of clause (iii) is to facilitate

I'm not comparing the type of enterprise you are; I'm comparing the
language you're suing. Yahoo demanded a "royalty-free, perpetual,
irrevocable, non-exclusive and fully sublicensable right and license
to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create
derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such Content"
in any form or media, which is a close cousin to what the Rhizome.org
contract says. Yahoo, BTW, backed down. See:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,1282,20472,00.html

I'd make a few more points:
* Defaults matter; it's not clear that everyone reads legalese
* It's not clear Rhizome.org needs a "perpetual" license for "all"
types of media -- don't tell me, lawyers wrote the contract?
* It seems likely that the Rhizome.org folks will do the right thing
based on artists' wishes in any case.

-Declan

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