In the wake of the deadline for the DVChallenge #9, Pete Bauer brought up his unwillingness to post his potential entry on YouTube because of YouTube's TOS. Peter quoted it as saying:


...by submitting User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successors' and affiliates') business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the YouTube Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels.

Can any of the experts in this area put this in plain language?

It sounds like people who post there stuff on YouTube are basically pulling their pants down.

But what can YouTube really do with the material posted on YouTube, other than promote YouTube with it? YouTube doesn't get the rights on the original material, do they? Are people posting on YouTube committing themselves to something?

What would be the worst case scenario of someone getting the short end of the stick, if something they posted on YouTube was really marketable?

Basically, you can't sue them if they decide to use your uploaded video for profit and marketing. It's a fair trade-off considering you (uploaders) are "exploiting" YouTube for their massive viewer base, hosting bandwidth and website infrastructure.

If you want to take advantage of YouTube, just upload a low quality, watermarked version of your movie while you keep the high quality version. (YouTube stores all video files sent in by its users).

Thanks Ian for your quick reply,

Do you know if YouTube retains these rights even after you have removed your material from their site?

Here's a link to the full TOS page:

http://www.youtube.com/t/terms

but the plain-English answer to the question is that it ends when YouTube decides it ends (what does "commercially reasonable" mean):

The above licenses granted by you in User Videos terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete your User Videos from the YouTube Service.

Again, I'm NOT discouraging anyone from making full use of YouTube. I just don't personally want to give Youtube, or anyone they may choose to sell to, rights to my work. Strictly a personal decision.

Hmm... I'd was ready to pay Youtube to replicate and distribute a film with my name on it... You mean they'll actually do it for free? :)

I'm happy to give Youtube rights to distribute my work, even if they make money off it. The more people who see it, the better. As I said in the other thread, our problem isn't protecting our work... it's obscurity.

If mass exposure via YouTube is the new raison d'etre for The DVC, that's cool. It's just something quite different from what it has been.

If mass exposure via YouTube is the new raison d'etre for The DVC, that's cool. It's just something quite different from what it has been.

The mission is unchanged, but exposure is good!

Given YouTube's "quality constraints" what you've usually uploaded is low quality, often compressed to even lower quality by YouTube, version so unless distribution quality is unimportant, your high quality master should retain some value and may very well increase in value with YouTube promoting the lower quality version. Note they mention "non-exclusive" so nothing prevents you from marketing the higher quality version. In fact many do take advantage of such TOS to market the higher quality versions.