[98700]

I'm happy to wait if the new owners are indeed working on a ToS that's not so grabby.

The problem, of course, being that we've been given no indication at all that the new owners are working on such a thing or have any interest in doing so. The owner's only post on here was to pat our hands and tell us not to worry our pretty heads. If they have any intention of modifying the TOS, they need to at least tell us they are working on doing that, and soon.

 

[Tobias Roote]

The problem, of course, being that we've been given no indication at all that the new owners are working on such a thing or have any interest in doing so. The owner's only post on here was to pat our hands and tell us not to worry our pretty heads. If they have any intention of modifying the TOS, they need to at least tell us they are working on doing that, and soon.

What's an important priority for us, might well be under 'any other business' on their agenda. Be cool and patient...

 

[Jan Hurst-Nicholson]

Play on English pub names. Just my sense of humour running amok.
Also, I figured Authors would prefer a Pub to a Cafe.

Stag Pub sounds like a pub for males, as in a stag party. Maybe a bar/coffee bar would be more universally understood. Sounds like a brain-storming session is in order

 

[AltMe]

Stag Pub sounds like a pub for males, as in a stag party. Maybe a bar/coffee bar would be more universally understood. Sounds like a brain-storming session is in order

Open to all ideas.

 

[98700]

Open to all ideas.

Maybe just "writers' pub"? I agree that the "sounding like a pub name" joke doesn't really come across, and if anything it does kinda sound like it means it's a guys-only place.

 

[Tobias Roote]

Maybe just "writers' pub"? I agree that the "sounding like a pub name" joke doesn't really come across, and if anything it does kinda sound like it means it's a guys-only place.

I'm teetotal....... :/

......justkidding

 

[Alan Petersen]

Getting way off topic here. Maybe move this to your FB page?

Yes, it's a bit cheeky that the plan for this new forum is being discussed here. Any names you come up with here can be used by VS in perpetuity.

 

[mjl1966]

Email and forum posts are considered a tangible medium?

You bet. This text right here resides on a storage device in a server. Quite tangible.

 

[mjl1966]

This is starting to remind me of the conversation over EU jurisdiction in the United States.

What you write in e-mail or on a message board cannot be taken by someone and used without your permission. Under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, anything you fix in a tangible medium is copyrighted the moment you write or upload it. You cannot transfer any of your exclusive rights in that copyright without a signed, written instrument by operation of federal law. The fantasies contained in click-through agreements do not supersede Title 17 U.S.C. Section 204.

Depends on whether or not they stand up as legal contracts. Contracts trump copyright law. Sorry.

 

[mjl1966]

Let's take this apart, bit by bit.

You agree to grant to KBOARDS.COM a non exclusive, royalty free, worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual license to reproduce, distribute, transmit, sublicense, create derivative works of, publicly display, publish and perform any materials and other information you submit to any public areas, chat rooms, bulletin boards, newsgroups or forums of KBOARDS.COM or which you provide by email or any other means to KBOARDS.COM and in any media now known or hereafter developed.


Standard stuff - this is primarily so they can publish our posts without us coming back and demanding a royalty. However, this is missing the typical limitation I see in most other TOSs, which limit the license to use only for the purpose of operating the site. Notice that this license does not include a right to charge for whatever we write here. (i.e. - they can't distribute for sale - they can just redistribute.) As for copyright, the fact that they are having us grant a license implies what we write here is, in fact, copyrighted. (Otherwise no such license would be required.) An important term here is "public areas." They don't mention PMs. Implication: PM contents do not fall under this license. The bit about providing material by email or any other means would pertain to stuff not submitted on the platform. For me personally, the fact that they are not limiting the license for the purpose of running the site bothers me.

Further, you grant to KBOARDS.COM the right to use your name and or user name in connection with the submitted materials and other information as well as in connection with all advertising, marketing and promotional material related thereto, together with use on any other VerticalScope Inc. web sites.

This part - the one everyone is really complaining about - pertains to a little number called moral rights. That's a legal term and it deals with a person's right to control what is and is not attributed to their good name. Some publishing contracts contain clauses like this so they can bandy about your name without having to clear it with you first. (And they often use the actual legal term "moral rights.") I've never ever seen a TOS that explicitly requires a waiver of moral rights. If I were somebody whose brand is actually worth money, I'd get with a lawyer on this one.

You agree that you shall have no recourse against VerticalScope Inc. for any alleged or actual infringement or misappropriation of any proprietary right in your communications to KBOARDS.COM.


Well, here in the U.S., you can't sign away your right to litigate. Most TOS and EULA agreements these days have an arbitration clause. Here, they are flat out saying we are agreeing not to do anything at all if we disagree with their use of our content. Even if they legally infringe your rights! ("actual infringement") I've never seen any such blanket disclaimer in a TOS. I have, however, seen such a disclaimer defeated in court time and again. Once again, if I had a valuable brand as an author, I'd run this whole thing by my lawyer.

For myself personally, I understand it well enough to know that VerticalScope can and will do just fine without my patronage. There are plenty of media on the Internet where I can express myself without signing away my moral rights, without granting an unpaid license to my content without limitation and where I am not expected waive my right to arbitration or litigation in the event somebody actually infringes my legal rights. (That last one actually makes me giggle. But not enough to stick around.)

See you in the funny papers.

 

[97251]

TBF I'll say that the ads for Ukrainian women bother me more than those TOS.

The thought that lurkers (and people doing Google searches)  can find my name in connection with this stuff doesn't please me. Of course, a solution is to change the username.

 

[TheWriterFormerly]

TBF I'll say that the ads for Ukrainian women bother me more than those TOS.

The thought that lurkers (and people doing Google searches) can find my name in connection with this stuff doesn't please me. Of course, a solution is to change the username.

When I started out, my first baby author website was on a free russian host (if you referred one new site a month, all was peachy.) It was great. The server was never down, the website ran fast and all was grand in the ToS. The best hosting experience I have had, with one exception. After about eighteen months, they decided free wasn't going to cut it anymore, and plopped a massive 500 pixel high banner add under my web site header, featuring not just an add, but actual hard core pornography GIF of some poor woman being rather violently defiled in a way that does not produce babies. Fortunately I had a small family forum attached which I kept open on my PC, and saw it pretty quick (well, to be honest, my sister saw it first.) An hour later, I had deleted my website entirely and opened a new paid account with a US based host, my domain redirected...

My point is, until you are paying for a service, as soon as advertising enters into things this reputation smasher is a risk. When attached to your actual author name, advertising must be avoided, so we have to pay for our hosting and related services as well as take care where else we put our names. Even if you write erotica, there are things out there you don't want to be attached to.

 

[an758GnQExU249]

My point is, until you are paying for a service, as soon as advertising enters into things this reputation smasher is a risk. When attached to your actual author name, advertising must be avoided, so we have to pay for our hosting and related services as well as take care where else we put our names. Even if you write erotica, there are things out there you don't want to be attached to.

Yes, this is why we all freaked out when the viglinks had started to appear in our posts right after the site was purchased. Suddenly our posts were being used to advertise things we had either no interest in or didn't approve of simply because we used a specific keyword. Adding those links to conversations not only implied endorsement from the poster, it caused confusion because you didn't know which hyperlinks were relevant to the discussion or which were ads.

 

[Tobias Roote]

Do we all see the same links? I use an adblocker so I'm unaware of this as a problem. I'm not going to turn it off to prove there is one, I'm happy for you to say it's there. However, I thought most of these ads were redirected subject to a set of rules usually relevant to keywords picked up by crawlers. I know it can be more sophisticated than that, like harvesting IP addresses and gaining country locations etc., but if those ads are appearing maybe it's because something within the site is activating them.

My real point is this - Now you're all being anonymous - who the hell am I reading about? How much notice should I pay to what you say? Am I on a writer's forum now, or have I been transferred by the moderators to a parallel universe? Are we all throwing out the baby with the bathwater here?

signed: Bemused of Corfu

 

[an758GnQExU249]

Do we all see the same links? I use an adblocker so I'm unaware of this as a problem.

The vigilinks were deactivated quickly after our first revolt lol

The vigilinks pick up keywords in individual posts and add automatic hyperlinks to advertised content. So if you said something about Amazon, Amazon would end up hyperlinked and the link would go to an Amazon page. It could be the most random of things. You could be talking about content generators for blogs and the word generators would get hyperlinked to a website that sells gas generators.

 

[AltMe]

or have I been transferred by the moderators to a parallel universe?

Kboards has always been a parallel universe!

 

[97251]

Do we all see the same links? I use an adblocker so I'm unaware of this as a problem. I'm not going to turn it off to prove there is one, I'm happy for you to say it's there. However, I thought most of these ads were redirected subject to a set of rules usually relevant to keywords picked up by crawlers.

signed: Bemused of Corfu

Yeah, you know... Haven't you heard that Ukrainian brides is the new trend in indie publishing? All authors are either researching about the topic, or writing about it. That's obviously the reason so many of us see things like that.

Anyways... I understand people writing "I have ad blockers, I don't see any of that." You can also say, "oh, it's only for non-logged-in users, so why bother?"
Or worse: "it's based on your browsing habits." Cause we're all looking for Ukrainian brides or perhaps researching the topic, since it's the new indie publishing trend. Obviously.

The issue is that lurkers who don't use adblocks see all the nasty ads. You have an ad blocker, but the website where you post doesn't. Right now the links are gone. When they were there, it meant that someone could click on your post and be taken to a very shady website, thinking you sent them. That said, I don't check Kboards when I'm not logged in anymore, so I can't say if the links have returned.

Also, remember that most people have the assumption that links and ads are related to the content of the website. Again, everyone will be sure that Ukrainian women or Russian women caught on camera are the new publishing trends. You know, how comfortable are you contributing to a site that has racist, sexist, demeaning ads? Cause when you post content you are supporting the ads, right?

Yes, when we're not paying for a service, it makes sense that it should be supported by ads. No issue with that. No issue whatsoever. The problem are the types of ads and links.

And what does it have to do with the TOS?

It's a bigger issue than just TOS.

I do appreciate mods and admins for allowing this conversation, though.

 

[Tobias Roote]

Kboards has always been a parallel universe!

Hmm! I recollect a short story somewhere that covered this. A man argued incessantly day after day in a forum that 'black was white', and 'white was black' only to find through some quirk of time and space that he was arguing with people in a different parallel universe where everything was reversed and 'white was black' and 'black was white'. I vaguely recollect going temporarily insane after finishing it.

 

[Tobias Roote]

Yeah, you know... Haven't you heard that Ukrainian brides is the new trend in indie publishing? All authors are either researching about the topic, or writing about it. That's obviously the reason so many of us see things like that.

Anyways... I understand people writing "I have ad blockers, I don't see any of that." You can also say, "oh, it's only for non-logged-in users, so why bother?"
Or worse: "it's based on your browsing habits." Cause we're all looking for Ukrainian brides or perhaps researching the topic, since it's the new indie publishing trend. Obviously.

The issue is that lurkers who don't use adblocks see all the nasty ads. You have an ad blocker, but the website where you post doesn't. Right now the links are gone. When they were there, it meant that someone could click on your post and be taken to a very shady website, thinking you sent them. That said, I don't check Kboards when I'm not logged in anymore, so I can't say if the links have returned.

Also, remember that most people have the assumption that links and ads are related to the content of the website. Again, everyone will be sure that Ukrainian women or Russian women caught on camera are the new publishing trends. You know, how comfortable are you contributing to a site that has racist, sexist, demeaning ads? Cause when you post content you are supporting the ads, right?

Yes, when we're not paying for a service, it makes sense that it should be supported by ads. No issue with that. No issue whatsoever. The problem are the types of ads and links.

And what does it have to do with the TOS?

It's a bigger issue than just TOS.

I do appreciate mods and admins for allowing this conversation, though.

Well! I didn't mean to cause offence on such a point, and if I knew who you were I might even be aware of who I upset, but as I don't I can't. So there you go. I was thinking about the reader's side as well as writers and I wasn't trying to imply anything. I think the internet is well-used to these things which is why ad-blockers are so popular these days. As an aside, I wonder if their income from ads has grown as a result, or withered and died.

Yes, I think the Mods allow this thread to exist because it's on topic, civil and TBH I think they are as much interested in how this pans out as we are.

 

[Used To Be BH]

What's an important priority for us, might well be under 'any other business' on their agenda. Be cool and patient...

I think part of the reason that some people aren't inclined to be cool and patient is that every minute we remain here as members makes it easier to argue that we are implicitly consenting to this nonsense.

I'm sure Verticalscope would want to consult with its lawyers on this issue before drafting new language, and I'm OK with that. I'm not OK with Verticalscope saying nothing one way or the other about what its intentions are.

At first, I thought the language was boilerplate. However, the analyses here, most recently the one by mjl1966, have rightly pointed out there are sections here that are unusual and that grant Verticalscope far more than it needs to run this forum. Maybe the intent isn't sinister, but, if that's the case, changing the language to reflect common practice in the industry shouldn't be that hard. If other companies don't extend their TOS to involve other sites, unrelated except in being owned by the same company, if other companies can restrict their TOS to things they need to run their own site, if other companies don't require unprecedented use of our names in other context, then why would Verticalscope need it. Practically every deviation from the standard boilerplate is one that could be used against us.

My one cause for optimism is that the vigilink problem was correctly fairly quickly. Maybe that was actually a mistake in the way the system was set up. How well and how fast the TOS concerns are addressed will tell the tale.