Hey so, I didn't want to keep replying and give unwanted attention to this nonsense, and I assume other posters thought as much, but since you're still tweeting @itchio and trying to worry devs, I'll reply one last time.
bosinpai wrote: ↑Thu Jun 28, 2018 6:28 am
Yes, these terms are common. However, this doesn't make it good
per se (e.g. harassment is pretty common too..).
You can check sites such as
https://tosdr.org or
https://tosback.org/ for what people with legal background wrote about those.
Note that GitHub's ToS is more restricted, in particular following a user backlash in early 2017.
It's funny that you insist on comparing itch.io to Facebook or Twitter, when it would be much more accurate to compare these terms to GameJolt's, Unity Marketplace's, and countless similar services of the same scale. But I guess it's easier to use this baseless comparison to frighten devs without any reason. :|
As others have explained, the possible uses of the license we grant
are already limited:
Publishers also grant a license to the Company for all patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights in and to the Content for publication on the Service, pursuant to this Agreement.
To the Company, a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the content in connection with the Service,
The emphasis is mine: the bolded passages clearly limit the reach of the license granted to itch.io.
I even looked at the analysis of copyright licenses on tos;dr and they do not say what you pretend they do.
If you look at the discussion threads regarding copyright licenses
on their mailing list, you'll notice that both the participants and the founder (Hugo Roy) are much more nuanced than you are, and do not believe that granting a license is inherently negative.
On the contrary, they say that only without explicit limits can licenses be dangerous. That's all. Nothing more.
For instance, in the thread discussing
the copyright license from Twitter's terms of service, rated as “bad” on the site, Hugo Roy explains:
I would say that the most worrying aspect of this license is that there
are absolutely no limitations to this license. By limitations, I mean
something like SeenThis (Twitter competitor) "autorisations permettant
le bon fonctionnement du système" or Dropbox's "These Terms do not grant
us any rights to your stuff or intellectual property except for the
limited rights that are needed to run the Services". Dropbox also
documents in their privacy policy why exactly and with whom information
is shared.
With such a broad scope in the copyright license,
Twitter effectively becomes owner of the data (tweet, meta information
in the tweet, pictures tweeted; etc.) and can transfer or sublicense to
third parties.
Hugo Roy very clearly acknowledges that the problem comes from the absence of limits, and from Twitter's willingness to share data, not from the license itself.
On the contrary, if you look at
the thread discussing the license granted to Soundcloud, you'll find it rated as “one of the best” because of explicit limits:
I like the fact that:
- the license to soundcloud itself is very limited to the hosting, and to the services that they provide;
- the content is licensed "horizontally" to all other users of the platforms according to the parameters set forth for each of the songs (terminate automatically when you remove)
I'm not saying that itch.io's license is as good as Soundcloud's, in fact there's honestly room for improvement.
However,
the problem is not that we grant “a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free” license to itch.io. That's standard, and may be required in certain cases —even tos;dr acknowledges as much, contrary to what you imply.
You may ultimately have a point because the license could be slightly improved, but... not on the scale you're implying where itch.io could just steal everyone's content. That's just false. There's exactly zero basis for what you've been implying from the very beginning.
And it's no use to tweet at them to rewrite the clause, they won't do it.
Honestly, please, please stop doing so, I feel awful for ever telling you to contact them. I only meant they could offer
clarifications, nothing more. Please don't annoy their community manager with this thing, and stop encouraging people to harass them, it's utterly useless, and I'm not sure what to say anymore.
And lastly, I said so earlier, but again:
It's incredibly short-sighted to ignore the numerous, practical actions of itch.io towards devs, like
open revenue sharing and
manual curation to focus on hypothetical developments that could perhaps happen if itch.io turned evil.
I'm not saying that legal terms don't matter, but like… In terms of relationship with devs, I'm not sure itch.io is the store you should be most worried about. It's incredibly weird to focus on hypothetical developments that they're most unlikely to commit in the first place.
(I personally intend not to reply anymore at all from this point onwards.)