It's nice to see a company respond to concerns and explain their end
user license in something approaching plain English. I know a bit
about licenses, but I was still a bit shocked by the original wording
Adobe used. But I think it was a mistake on my part (and a few other
people picked this wording out too): I assumed "fully sublicensable"
meant that Adobe could effectively license your material; sell it on,
effectively. What it actually means is that the license you grant
Adobe is sublicensed to their subcontractors (you extend the agreed
license to a third party of Adobe's choosing).
You did not make a mistake, those of us that reacted did not make a
mistake and Adobe's lawyers did not make a mistake.
The target audience for Express is what they would term the youth
audience that Adobe would not expect to buy their other products so
Adobe thought that they could get away with a rights grab. Please
remember that Adobe's lawyers are experts when it comes to property
rights, copyright and pursuing those that violate Adobe's ownership
rights.
The objectionable phrases would have been part of the brief from
Adobe’s product department when they came to describe how Adobe may
want to use content uploaded to the site not just now but at any
point in the future – not overzealous lawyers as some would have you
believe.
Most likely Adobe thought that they could eventually build up a stock
photography system this way. You may remember that Adobe have been
trying to do this since CS2 but with little success due to objections
to their RF model from professional photographers. Had the objections
not been so strong I expect that at some point in the future images
displayed on Express would have been available via a re-launched
version of Adobe’s stock photography system
Take a look at this except from the original again:
https://www.photoshop.com/express/terms_old.html
"Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with
respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for
inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant
Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual,
irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute,
derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt,
publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such
Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into
other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later
developed."
"...you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive,
perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use,
distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce,
modify, adapt, publish..."
"...royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully
sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other
remuneration from..."
"...derive revenue or other remuneration from..."
You won't find this bit of nonsense in the new terms and conditions.
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GMT+1 (BST - Summertime)
