Posted by David Fendley in A post on the Vimeo forums a couple weeks ago has begun to cause quite a stir.
Vimeo has changed their Terms of Service to state:
“VIMEO shall be entitled to unrestricted use of any Submission for any purpose whatsoever, commercial or otherwise, without compensation to the submitter.”
In contrast, Blip.tv’s TOS states:
“Blip.tv respects the fact that your content is yours, and will not sell advertising on your content or sell your content without your permission.”
There’s a rather stark difference between these two TOSs. Vimeo backs up their TOS by stating, “For legal reasons and technical realities, we need to keep the language broad in our Terms & Conditions; however, that being said, we do not generally commericialize any members’ videos, and if you are making your posts private, it is very unlikely we ever would.”
I understand that when running a service such as Vimeo, things can get hairy on the legal side. Having a more liberal TOS in favor of Vimeo eases that pain for them. However, if Vimeo wishes to grow its user base and avoid a potential boycott, it needs to endure the pains of writing a more clearly defined TOS in favor of the user.
What you create should belong to you regardless of where you choose to host it. Vimeo has rights, but only as the distributor, not as the owner. Decide for yourself, but I for one will not be hosting any material on Vimeo until their TOS is reflective of Blip.tv’s attitude towards user content.
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