Fri, Oct 17, 2008 | 13:51 BST
Can Sony use user-generated PSN content in any way it sees fit?
Interesting, this. As pointed out by IHaveThePrincess, a passage in the latest version of Sony’s PSN terms and conditions – posted on October 15 – appears to suggest that the company can use any user-generated PSN content in any way it sees fit.
The text says:
“You authorize and license SCEA a royalty free and perpetual right to use, distribute, copy, modify, display, and publish your User Material for any reason without any restrictions or payments to you or any third parties.”
Unless we’re fuzzy with lack of sleep, this would appear to mean that Sony could, hypothetically, take a SingStar video and use it in a global ad campaign, or even sell on LittleBigPlanet levels as DLC.
Just checking this with SCEE now. Thanks, PS3F.
8 comments
#1
BillyBatts
17/10/08, 1:58 pm
Hmm, that’s certainly one way of saving on the extra dev time and cost of producing DLC, get your customers to do it for you! Genius.
#2
Psychotext
17/10/08, 2:01 pm
Yeah… it sort of means they can do whatever they like with it. But I’m not sure there’s any way around it to cover themselves legally for the distribution etc.
#3
deftangel
17/10/08, 2:14 pm
If it’s SCEA does this apply to us Europeans then? I thought the PSN updates came out of SCEJ, or if not the ToS would be for each Sony region?
#4
Roybott
17/10/08, 2:35 pm
I’m pretty sure there is no evil plan to resell peoples content.
The reason they would have put that clause in is the same reason that MS put in a very similar clause when they released aload of the Microsoft Game Studios content (images, sound etc) for hobbyist and XNA game developers to use.
If I remember right the main reason behind having a cluase like that stems back to what used to happen in Hollywood based on film scripts. Basicly people would hear a movie was coming out and then try to sue the studio and claim that they wrote the script and had sent it to the studio 6 months prior.
If MM/Sony release some new levels this clause stops someone who may have created a very similar level, before MM, from trying to sue MM saying they stole the design (whether or not the design was stolen).
#5
airdom
17/10/08, 3:52 pm
Well this is not suprising at all. a lot of people do this, just that no one reads it!! its the case with pretty much every social networking sites also! for exmaple, Facebook can do whatever they want with the photos/videos you post also. they can make ads and whatnot. so techically, if facebook would feel like it, they could sell all your pictures (because once you post them, they are not yours anymore!) and potentially have one of the larget stock photo database on the web.
Thats bad.
#6
Esha
17/10/08, 3:59 pm
It’s a bad practice but almost anything that handles community content does it, I even hazily remember some single player games having something like this in their EULA for modded content. I’ll dig up exactly which ones if anyone’s all that interested. I think World of Warcraft has something like this in its EULA for mods, too. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Even CaféPress does it, not to mention the ones airdom covered.
It’s really a legal precaution, and it’s ugly. But today we live in a monkey-sue-monkey World, and everyone feels the need to protect their arses.
It’s kind of sad, but very much just a way of the World thing.
#7
sickpuppysoftware
18/10/08, 12:27 am
What if you base your level on the Qur’an? What’ll Sony do then?
#8
Syrok
18/10/08, 12:42 am
It would be quiet hard to make a level based on the Qur’an as they are hardly any stories in it and those stories that are there are also in the Bible.