NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad

NNSquad Home Page

NNSquad Mailing List Information

 

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

[ NNSquad ] Re: [mjh@itys.net: Re: CNN's use of "Octoshape" slips live video P2P into users'?PCs]

Lauren Weinstein wrote: 
The potentially negative implications of Octoshape seem quite serious
in a number of ways and from a variety of bandwidth use, privacy, and
security standpoints.  Given the reported lack of obvious, fully
informed disclosure to users about what this software is really doing
(language buried in the usage "fine print" doesn't fulfill this
requirement), one wonders if there might also be some interesting legal
issues as well in various locales.

Matthew J. Harmon wrote: 
This brings up an interesting question for the lawyers, by implicitly
using (allowing) users to re-distribute their content does this grant
re-distribution rights in perpetuity to the end-user for the content?

The Octoshape EULA [0] only has two mentions of copyright under "do not
use for illegal purposes" and IP for the software. Content is mentioned
under "no warranty and limitation of liability." Perhaps this was
overlooked.

It does seem to be a badly designed EULA. Odd, because the people who build these things usually hire high-priced IP lawyers to make sure they get it right. In this case it looks like it was written by the "small Danish company" (Octoshape), but CNN should have checked it out before using it to redistribute their content.

In general, you can't grant rights that you don't have. So if CNN has only the right to distribute something for a limited time, then they can only grant that right to their users, not a perpetuity. OTOH, if CNN has agreed to pay a fee for each copy distributed... they would be on the hook for all the copies that users distributed, but wouldn't get the advertising revenue they expected if the distribution happened without people going to the CNN webpage first.

On the third tentacle, CNN may well own this content, so they _would_ be granting full rights to redistribute.

On the fourth (and probably gripping) tentacle, it may be that the EULA only grants the right to use/distribute the Octoshape software, _not_ the CNN content. Certainly that's the argument that CNN's lawyers would make if it ended up in court. After all, it's the EULA for the _software_, not for the content.