Viddling Around™

YouTube just revised their Terms and Conditions, and just pimped out all their users. Key section (as highlighted by our friends at Boing Boing);

“…by submitting the 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 successor’s) business… in any media formats and through any media channels.”

Fundamentally, it means you surrender any and all rights to your content when you upload it - and keep it on YouTube. You get these rights back once you remove the item from YouTube. As has been pointed out on this issue on some other blogs, the challenge is that this in reality limits what YouTube can actually do with your content. In practical terms, it’s impossible for them to sublicense your content to another site, advertiser, “Girls Gone Wild” video producer, since once you change your mind and pull it. Not that YouTube would indemnify you or anything, but no reasonable organization is going to use or license something that they know could be contested later. Not to say it’s never going to happen - but unlikely I think.