And yes, by "here," I waffle deliberately between Lexington and deviantART. It was blissful outdoors (still is), and such a huge relief in here.
Um, if you haven't seen it yet, Richard has announced the revised Submission Agreement
And Richard's thoughts have started to follow up in his journal.
Besides which, my Goal in Mind from the other day, if you missed it.
Now actually, my wrists are killing me tonight (like they haven't in months), so am just gonna go over broad strokes for now, and then shoot for an interesting retrospective this weekend. (That is, if anyone failed to grasp the underlying importance of all this, all will be made clear.)
But for now...
Some people will always feel nervous about the scope of rights and protections given to DA in the Submission Agreement, but now the Artist has all the right he wants to walk, at any time, and with a bare minimum of hassle or friction.
And, as they should, the Artists have the right to reclaim one piece, selected deviations, or all works, at will. In this way, we can all become much less concerned about what will or might happen, and focus instead on our day-to-DA experience.
Let's review some highlights of this progress, and why they're so important.
As before, complete Termination of the Agreement (as described in 1.a.) requires basically erasing all possible evidence of one's existence here and providing written notice to DA of the intention. However, usefully, the ambiguity about irremovable comments has been addressed explictly (both in 1.a. and 15.f.), so that those comments cannot be interpreted as a constraint upon Termination.
Some have said this was a moot point, but the clarification is usefully comforting. It shouldn't have to go to court to hash that out, what really should be obvious. And now it is.
What's new, what's awesome, what we've been right to campaign for, is 1.b., the Individual Removal Clause. We can now reclaim a single work, or all our works one-by-one, simply by using the Remove function. The Remove function serves as electronic (rather than written) notification, and this electronic notification is reinforced as valid in 15.f.4.
1.b. is also important because it reinforces the availability of the Removal function. Much of this whole issue has revolved around the possibility that DA might be sold someday, and this really helps hedge our bet against whomever might theoretically assume the contract. They'd be asking for trouble (now) to take that function away from us.
I'm not assuming DA will be sold someday, but I'll speak to the importance of allowing for that this weekend. But as described before, the individual removal clause is the loophole in our favor, that spares us the necessity of complete overarching termination in order to "rescue" our art on a moment's notice.
Now, to jump out of order a little bit, Termination formally ends the contract relationship, except for points allowed by Section 15.f. concerning Survival. Most of the clauses covered by Survival relate to protecting DA itself (or protecting the Artist, in Section 5's case), and should be uncontentious for that purpose. "Corporate boilerplate," like I said the other day, and generally common to just about every other Agreement you'll find on the web.
However, it's Section 3. License to Use Artists Materials that represents the broad scope of privileges for DA to do with what they will (along with 4.a. and 4.c.), and therefore 3.e. is especially important, because 3.e. survives Termination. I bring it up not just cause it's fixed, but because it turned into a fascinating case study of the general paranoia surrounding the Agreement itself.
3.e. used to say, "Artist acknowledges that Artist will not have any right, title, or interest in any materials with which Artist Materials may be combined or into which all or any portion of Artist Materials may be incorporated."
I'll admit frankly that this language always made me very nervous, an interminable clause that seemed to suggest that DA (or some future agent) could gather up our art in calendars, digital quilts, CD's, or whatever other "materials" would effectively take it away from us by subsuming it into "another material." (In fact, it eventually became clear that 3.e. even applies simply to the web pages in which our art is displayed here.)
That is, to strip it to its seeming core, "not have any right to any material into which art may be incorporated." Which would both explain why it "survives," and make it especially ominous that it survives.
And nothing I'd ever read, in previous administrative defenses of the Agreement, had ever led me to believe otherwise. But it turns out that this point was lost on us all.
When pressed, the lawyer explained its necessity. 3.e. isn't concerned about our work at all, but rather the content around our work. It says that we do not have any right to any other content by virtue of its proximity to our own.
So, it's true that I haven't "gone to bat" for a "plain-English" version of the Agreement (because, frankly, I thought we would be weak to demand that DA pay for so many billable hours as that), but because 3.e. "survives," it was of utmost importance to clarify its intention, and rule out any inadvertant implication.
Which, thankfully, has been addressed by the addition of one word.
"3.e. Artist acknowledges that Artist will not have any right, title, or interest in any OTHER materials with which Artist Materials may be combined or into which all or any portion of Artist Materials may be incorporated."
In effect, "other" creates a perimeter around our own work, to which our rights (including Termination) extend, and outside which they never encroach. As a protection for other parties (i.e., other artists and DA as a provider of content), it now does make sense that this should "survive."
And yes, let me tell you, "other" was the last and most nerve-racking word of this whole process. And therefore, the greatest and most amazing relief.
3.e. has been weirding people out for years. It just goes to show how revising the Agreement was a constructive cause altogether, overcoming anxiety that was completely unnecessary, just by subjecting the document to a "paranoid" review.
On the flipside, I can take barely no credit at all for Section 5., concerning the Limitation of Rights, to the extent that Richard and his review of community concerns had produced this major new clause with no input from me weeks ago.
There's still a little loophole slack in it that we frankly couldn't figure out how to remove (without undue impediment to DA), but we tightened it up significantly, in that now one Artist's work cannot be sold independently of other artists' work. I.e., the company could not sell a handful of my work to a party that was only after a particular piece, or to some publication that wanted to exploit my fame after the fact. (haha)
The company still could sell a DVD of, say, cloud photography, in which yours or my work might be contained, but to a very real extent, this whole revision project has been about a particular compromise, that the Company still could screw us, but pretty much only once before they'd be found out and we'd be leaving en masse. (More on that this weekend, but this obviously points to the huge importance of improved Termination options.)
The flipside is that if the Company ever found a market we'd like them to sell in to, for our mutual benefit, the Company has the right to pursue that without further revising the Agreement. And, usefully, Section 5 does point out that "deviantART will contact Artist in writing about any individual commercial uses of Artist Materials instigated by deviantART," another gain.
Finally, a couple other points bear notice, and then once my wrists rest up tonight, I'll be glad to answer any other questions tomorrow.
15.f. is the Survival clause mentioned earlier, and it does allow for DA to retain backup copies of our work. However, it does not allow them to do anything with those backup copies. I.e., none of Sections 3 or 4 are relevant to copies stored only for backup, after Termination relevant to those works.
It's also interesting to remember that last summer, codifying the "remains on the server" policy to 30 days was among Richard's first prominent concessions to community concerns.
Survival also covers the extension of work to sublicensees, but only temporarily. It codifies "a reasonable amount of time" for which to notify and remove works from their privilege.
Would I have liked this more bolted down? Yes. But it's frankly a huge improvement over previous inattention to this topic. This point used to be an open sieve, and now it's just an irritating formality, but overtly temporary.
And, lastly, a sweet little point that will be lost on many, but stir deeply for a chosen few, is that if you look within Section 15.c. on Notice...
You'll find a fax number.
So, one other central point to make for tonight, before a more thorough retrospective this weekend.
This whole campaign, besides its legal and philosophical benefits listed above, was a test. I don't mean bogus, or frivolous, or anything like that. But rather, a means by which pursuit of our rights would shed light on matters of comparable or greater importance.
This campaign tested the people in charge of DA, and their respect for us, and even more importantly tested the underlying foundation of this arrangement, between company and community.
Failure to accomodate our legitimate concerns would have made grim suggestions about the motivations of that document.
There was quite the reason I was sweating that word "other" in 3.e.
But there's also quite the reason that "other" was met with minimal resistance, and ushered right through to inclusion.
Because in every step of this recent roundabout, Richard was on our side.
Not once did he waver...
From doing the artist right.
