The Importance Of Reading Terms

Wow! is all I can say....

Read the fine print everyone...

Caveat Emptor.........rule 1 !...............noun: caveat emptor

the principle that the buyer alone is responsible for checking the quality and suitability of goods before a purchase is made.


Buyer Beware !

Nice image, Susan. Thanks for the warning,reminder.

As importnat as reading terms is how many people do you think do so? There just aren't enough hours in the day!

I understand the rights to copy and publish etc.... We all have to do that...but....SERIOUSLY?

Thanks for the reminder. I am one who takes the time out to read TOS. But I don't think people would be surprised by that lol

I recently got something very similar when participating in an urban sketchers conference. It was for reporting on the event. I would have signed a once only, or a one week authorization (unlikely to generate interest for more than a couple of days). Almost nobody signed, so there was general reporting on the event but hardly any specific work. I have seen the same at sports events, cant participate if you dont sign, your personal image etc...

Wow, they didn't really need all the rest with this part "You hereby waive all rights to any claim against X.com and its successor and assigns for any alleged or actual infringements"

That is some crazy stuff! I do wish in these instances they didn't need to remain nameless.

I bet a lot of us are on that site as well. Great thread, Susan and thank you.

You may name it, Susan

Yes, please name it. I just got 2 sales from a POD oversees and would love to know if that is the site you're referencing.

This is more common than many might realize. A lot of national and international photo contests do this and most people submitting their work have no idea they are giving it away.

i'm curious too. so many just trust the TOS thinking that its all standard stuff. but they usually aren't. i do wonder how many pieces are sent them where they then, register your works for copy protection.

https://artist.com/terms/

is it this site?

i searched that phrase

---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

i think they pieced it together from other contracts. there are two indemnification clauses in there for some reason. they mention they don't sell alcohol which is an odd thing to read.

i just emailed them asking what the heck that meant, i'm curious to their answers. especially the part about being able to copyright my work and sue people.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Which place is it, Mike? Abbie said it's OK to name.

https://artist.com/terms/ as far as i know


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Thanks!

Sounds like Equifax has gone into POD.

If it's the place Mike mentioned, as a member, if you send them a scathing email, they state they have a right to basically put it up on a billboard as big as a house in Times Square forever and ever, in sickness and in health, until the end of time. Or your artwork, for that matter, advertising the Kit Kat Peep Show. That TOS is a jumbled mess!

it sounds like, that you have to have the copyright and any permissions. then they take that from you, recopyright it to themselves. have the plans to sue people that are using your images, including yourself because you gave them the images exclusively. and you can't sue them, but they can probably sue you, if they get in trouble using your images... i think that's the debacle someone can get into.

seems they cherry picked pieces, otherwise there would be no indemnification listed twice

i had an agent that did that, she even gave herself the power of attorney in that one.

---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Actually there is an analogy with Equifax.

People are slowly giving up on the idea of controlling their personal data, like SSN, credit and medical histories. Every month there's a new and bigger data theft from hacking. Every week we get "privacy notifications' by mail, for this or that company, which we don't read. It's beyond overwhelming, we can't possibly take all the "recommended actions" to "protect" what's left of our privacy. The focus is shifting from preventing identity theft to mitigating the losses when it occurs.

The same thing is happening with our image ownership. We're giving up. No one is jumping through all the hoops required to actually secure copyright on all our photos. No one is scanning the web every week and sending out useless DMCA takedown notices. And many of us are giving up on even reading the TOS for a new POD because we're just hoping to find a place where we could actually get seen - not be buried by Getty and Conde Nast -
and make some sales at our own prices. And the opportunities seem to be shrinking at this point.

I'm not throwing in the towel, I'd still read a TOS before giving anyone my work. But it's an uphill battle.

Yup, Mike is right, it's the artist.com terms. I actually find it physically nauseating.

Thank you VIVA!

___________
Susan Maxwell Schmidt
So-so Board Moderator and
Artist Extraordinaire

still waiting on their reply, what they meant by that. i'm curious if they give a lame excuse like my agent did... stating she wanted the power of attorney to sue people for me...


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Chuck is right on also. Seems many top national and international contest, as well as many smaller ones have the same crap. It's really gone overboard!! To protect their asses, they will put yours in a sling.

Sad part, most are so long and discombobulated that too many just go ahead and sign feeling that if they don't they can't ever do anything.

Too much mumbo jumbo legal crap that costs too much time to figure out. If you were lucky enough to find a decent lawyer who could sniff through every crack, he'd more than likely charge a fortune and tell you to never sign any of it; hence, just play dead!

Gotta love them options!!

It's laughable, really. Who do they think they are? They just look like idiots, imho. I don't think you can do what they are saying legally. Signing over copyright HAS TO BE more difficult than just signing up to use a website, no? Right?

@Joy, thanks to the marvelous DMCA - which was written by lobbyists for the big internet providers - it really is that easy. Because copyright is only as good as the enforcement, and under the DMCA, enforcement is all up to us.

This particular parasite isn't a US company - it's obvious, from reading other text on their site, that English isn't their native language.

Not valid. Won't hold up in any court.

A transfer or exclusive license of any or all rights under copyright must be in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed (or the owner's duly authorized agent).


Dan Turner
Dan Turner's Seven Keys to Selling Art Online

@Joy, that sound wasn't a matter of choice - it was the actual sounds of data being exchanged as audio tones. I could give you technical jargon, but you're basically hearing the electronics doing its thing to get the 2 units in synch over the phone connection. They made that sound audible for troubleshooting purposes, or maybe just to impress customers. With many modems you could choose to shut it off and they'd work silently.

Oh, ok, Jim....that makes more sense than just choosing THAT as the sound, instead of birds tweeting, or something :) Thanks for that info!

What no Delphi history? IRC was the place to be after BBS' and before the web. Connected to that sucker with a blazing 300 baud external modem!

I am so old. I even still have my AOL 1.1 disk. Somewhere. Unfortunately I'm too old to remember where, exactly.

___________
Susan Maxwell Schmidt
So-so Board Moderator and
Artist Extraordinaire

Kathleen Bishop 1 Day Ago Well if I have to get stuck with an earworm all morning, I can think of worse.

It's a small world, after all.

Yes we made those 300 BPS modems. And then came the "HIGH SPEED" 1200s. Followed in a year or so by "HIGH SPEED" 2400s. Wow! And the year after that....

I had AOL It was the only one over here I seem to remember

My computer costs me well over £2000 It was all wires and box, whirrs and buzzes

I also had a Sinclair. I LOVE that noise when I hear it on retro news

Mt first internet access predated AOL slightly, it was on a gaming network called TEN, it also allowed BBS access, talk about archaic! Even when I got AOL it didn't give you full access to the web, most of the access was to content hosted by AOL only, it really sucked and I did not hesitate much to jump ship when CompuServe became readily available and I was with them for years before I switched to Concentric because it was faster then AT&T cable internet came out and that was that. I don't miss dial up in the least.

Right you are David! I remember that now!

AOL was all about AOL and not giving access to the WWW. But they had stock quotes and a lot more business publications so I signed up with them. I was in the stock market and actually traded my own portfolio at the time so it was important to me. AOL's mail service was much better than anything out there at the time.

Sooner or later I dumped AOL because they were not staying up with the times. I was trading stocks and watching CNBC every morning and I remember Steve Case, the AOL CEO, coming on the air and make some crazy statements that they were going to continue to be the dominant player and they did not have to give access to the entire net. I shorted the stock. We all know how that turned out. :-) :-)


There was still another service out there that I can not the life of me remember the name of. It was before AOL. It was the same time as The Source. It was more expensive but did not have anything more than I wanted so I went with The Source after test driving them both.

In UK it was pipex or something like that. But I worked it out and I'm a late comer...I got my first set up in 1992-3...I feel sooooooo oldddddd

My first PC was in 1996, $2100 with a printer. I had the internet through @Home at 1 MB/s. This was unheard of in those days. I would go into Pratt and the net was 9600 baud. For those that do not know what baud is 9600k. In other words my home system was moving over 100 x faster than the US Air Force high security quasi secret system.

@Home sort of failed and might have been bought out. I was on SNET by them. A local CT phone carrier that would be bought up by SBC out of Texas.


Oh....SNET is not S net. Southern New England Telephone.....the only independent carrier when the old ATT was a monopoly.

Dave

My first computer was a 486/33DX that cost exactly $2000, it did not include a printer or a modem, (or sound card!), I think it was 1993 or 94. From there I just upgraded components as I needed to, within about two-three years there was nothing left of the original system. lol

our first computer was an atari 800, it could play games, we could write games using code from magazines, and so on.

our first official computer was a 386/16 later upgraded to a 386/20. we had a friend that built it, in those days there were no computer stores or online. i think it was around 1988-89 or so. from there we upgraded bit by bit. adding exciting things like

3.5 drive
iomega
zip drive
marstek hand held scanner
24 pin printer
eventually a sound card that did more than basic sounds. midi files were the thing then.
adding a mouse was a big thing then
1200 then a 2400 baud modem. eventually i think it was a 32.2k i think that was the number. using a bbs to get programs, a 300k file took us like 2 hours to download. but it was magical.... until someone picked up the phone and destroyed the transmission.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

In 1981 I was programming in FORTRAN on a Vax, main frame. Using Hollerith cards. It would take an hour to compile and run a program on the half life of U238.

Dave

I didn't touch a computer until 1985, my senior year in high school, it had a 12" monochromatic screen, AutoCAD 2.1 and an 8.5 X 11 pen plotter was attached. We were required to put in so many hours on it for our grade for vocational drawing class, I hated that thing!

Whew! Good thing I'm not on there. Thanks for the heads up!

We got an Apple 2C and printer in 1989.....we printed a lot of banners in those days!

My first 'puter was an Atari 2100 (I think) with an external 5 1/4" floppy, tape drive and a black and white TV as a monitor. That was in '84-'85 I think, maybe '83. I remember spending a couple hours retyping code from a book just to make a lightening bolt flash on the screen. I was very easily amused back then.

After that I moved on to an 8088 with a 30mg hard drive and 64K of RAM running a very early version of DOS. I still have Edlin nightmares. If there's a hell, this machine is going to be mine.

I got a 286 (I think) in '92 and a couple years later built my own Pentium machine on my kitchen table from the motherboard up. The geek in me had taken its stranglehold and though I've managed to loosen its grip, it ain't ever gonna let go.

___________
Susan Maxwell Schmidt
So-so Board Moderator and
Artist Extraordinaire

Do they still make Atari's

I have some floppies in my drawer still

would love to know what's on them

i'm going to say no, but i'm probably wrong. i'm sure there are clubs that still use it. and i think people re-wrote software for the atari so they can play it on their phone or computer. i bet you can get it on ebay. the tricky part may be to get a tv to work with it, because a lot of those connectors were removed.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

I REALLY want another Sinclair but only if they can give me the game I had on it. I cannot remember the name of it but really loved it

You had to go square to square and find treasures etc. I have NO idea what its name was although I would remember if triggered. I do know they had a site that allowed me to play online .. like a retro thing, but I have lost it

http://www.atarimania.com/list_games_atari-400-800-xl-xe-cartridge_cartridge_1_8_G.html

here's a list of cartridge games, maybe it will jog the memory circuits.

i never found anyone at all that made use of that second useless slot.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

The game was on a sinclair thingamijig...whattyamacallit.....one of those

on a floppy....?

off to look... brain addled

I found it! Thanks Mike... Can't do anything with it but it is there

"would love to know what's on them"

By now probably a bunch or corrupted useless files.

you could probably find a sim of it though. relive your youth. they even cycle them down so its not based on megahertz like they use to.


---Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Check the App Store, there are a million clones out there. The only game I remember playing on my Atari was a tape version of Centipede. I loooooved me some Centipede.

___________
Susan Maxwell Schmidt
So-so Board Moderator and
Artist Extraordinaire

Was Atari Asteroids? Loved that game as a teenager at the Bloomfield Bowling Alley. We would form a group and for 25 cents play for 16 hours. We had to skip school to do that. LOL

Dave