Report: Complaints trigger rewrite of Photoshop Express terms
It appears Adobe is quickly responding to concerns about a surprising clause in its terms of service for Photoshop Express, the free Web-based software launched Wednesday that has otherwise been well-received.
Users were taken aback by a clause that basically gives Adobe the right to do anything it wants with their photos. As CNET's Lori Grunin first pointed out in her review on Webware, the clause in question goes like this:
Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed.
Grunin's response: "I'm going to give Adobe the benefit of the doubt and assume someone forgot to put the choke collar on the lawyers, letting something this undesirable slip through." And she was right on the money, at least according to a report from Adobe blogger John Nack, who contacted Adobe with concerns about the terms of service.
Nack wrote that he got a note back from the Photoshop Express team Friday stating that it agrees that the clause "implies things we would never do with content," and therefore the legal team is making it a priority to post revised terms.
Michelle Meyers is an associate editor who tracks online happenings in media, entertainment, and politics. E-mail Michelle. 
"Who?"
"Top... men."
I don't post anything to any site that claims ownership in any way
over my content. Period! Much of what PhotoShop does can be
done with other software. This is just another example of the
arrogance of Adobe. Don't blame it on the lawyers. They work for
management! The fine print is corporate policy. Read and act
accordingly!
J.
MySpace learned a valuable lesson on this as well.
It didn't take very long to fix the terms.
The GIMP works fine for all my purposes-- I can't even begin to think how slow an online advanced image editing system would be.
By posting or otherwise submitting Images, you grant to Adobe and all other users of this Site permission to use your Images in connection with their use permitted by these Terms of Use (including making prints and gift items incorporating such Images), including an unrestricted, irrevocable, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free and fully paid up license under all Intellectual Property Rights to copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, modify, translate, transmit and reformat your Images, with or without having your name attached to such Images, in any manner or form and for any purpose, with full rights to sublicense such rights through multiple tiers of distribution. You will receive no compensation with respect to the use of your Images.
http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopexpress/
not on the launch site,
https://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html
but the terms there,
https://www.photoshop.com/express/pxterms.html
lead you to an additional term page,
https://www.photoshop.com/express/terms.html
which in section 8.a. still contains:
"Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed."
They certainly have a lot of terms, and a lot of work to do on their terms.
There are so many websites for photo contests and services that
have similar objectionable terms that are slipped in there by
lawyers. It's typical of the arrogance of lawyers who seem to
think people are too stupid to read.
The people responsible for these terms should be fired. That's
the only way lawyers are going to learn to attenuate their greed.
Once they see that there are significant negative consequences
to writing such ludicrous, damaging terms at the outset, it'll
stop happening.
No reasonable person would think people would accept such
terms. Thus, proof it was written by lawyers.
The right image can be worth tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, but the photographer gets zero if they submit it to one of these major news outlets. They take perpetual rights, can resell it, etc.
This is corporate abuse, of course. Such terms are a license to steal. We needs laws to protect us from predatory corporations. Let them fairly pay everyone they solicit to gather news.
PS. How does one go about closing the account??? I don't want to help Adobe pad their subscription totals..
- Google Notepad Has Similar Wording
- by dcreedo April 1, 2008 7:21 PM PDT
- I stopped using Google notepad when I actually read the UA after a reinstall.
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