At least in German law "right to exercise any and all copyright" is not a legitimate phrase and means nothing. Just a little fun fact.

To add to what you said, the term "royalty-free" is also used in the PayPal clause. They're not making money off anything.

Reading is hrd.

actually, pretty sure royalty free, means that they wouldn't pay you ANYTHING if they sold your stuff you gave them.

I dont think these dumb TOS would be enforced anyway. Any real court would take them down.

Tumblr went nuts about this. I didn't even get it when i read it the first time

Tumblr goes nuts about everything with little to no provocation.

Triggered.

Lol The fact that the vast majority of paypal use by artists is for adult commissions which is against their TOS, why would you ever want to 'provide' them?

Man, everyone always forgets that little tidbit.

When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.

'Cause reading comprehension: it's fucking important.

I knew as soon as I saw this a few days ago that it would explode into more drama. I'm surprised no one has used this as another excuse to exclaim that they are leaving FA (for good this time... For real... They mean it!).

Ahh, yeah... heard about that a week ago... took a few minutes to actually take in what it was actually saying. We need to just invent a new job classification and start hiring people to interpret legal-ise into english.

We did. They were called lawyers. Then they were assimilated into the Law-Mind. They are now legion. Or something.


Resist with futility!

Lol I had some one come into my stream the other day freaking out about this. I called up paypal and easily debunked everything they were saying while on the phone.

That's still not the whole story. You also have this:

"or posting content (in each case for publication, whether on- or off-line) using the Services,"

So now we have to look back to where the definition of "The Services" is, and what the definition of "Using" the "Services" is. And what the definition of "Posting" is.

It's not really about panicking over just this one clause, in my opinion. The problem is that I live my entire life in a constant state of panic over the tens of thousands of binding legal documents that I have signed without understanding at this point. Even reading what it says is not a defense because at the end of the day, it's all about how whichever judge gets the case interprets it. Which is completely and totally arbritrary and will often defy common sense...

This is the first time I hear of this, and honestly, I'm having a bit of trouble understanding what that means? I'm a bit slow, sorry, but could soemone try and explain what this means?

There was a tumblr post that cleared up this whole fiasco. I'll just copypaste it here:

----

Wait WAIT. Although I strongly dislike PayPal and avoid using it for my transactions because I dislike their business model and methods, this situation is a mistaken reading of legal user agreements. It is a common misunderstanding. I used to write and edit contracts for artists and other guests in the gallery I worked for 6 years so I’ve explained similar misunderstandings many, many times… The most important thing to remember about “legalese” is that every word literally counts, and also the context of the section in which the line is included. Also, the words “license” and “rights” are much, MUCH different than “copyright” in a legal document, even though we use them interchangeably in common speak.

The key line here is “when providing us with content or posting content using the Services”.

Context: This is Section 15.5, in Section 15. Capitalized letters have specific definitions in Section 15, and the definition of “Services” is “all payment services and related products available through the PayPal website(s).”

Section 15.5 are both referring to “content” as in the words/descriptions, images like your business logo that you will soon be able to upload to their services and content aka the name of your business that you filled in the “Business Name” box, etc. The content is basically the words and pictures you fill out in their forms for them to make the transaction happen.

From their wording and seeing as how they are splitting from eBay this year, it is likely they’re going to make a eBay/etsy/aliexpress/Amazon/redbubble/Society6/zazzle-style marketplace site. For the record, most services, companies, profit and non-profit galleries, etc that allow you to upload or submit content have similar wording in their agreements, because to cover their ass when they show your logo on their website and services.

Your intellectual property and copyright on your website are unaffected by this, as are the copyright over the sales you make. They are using legalese to protect their ass for having your business’ logo on their system while you’re using their Services (using paypal).

“a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable (through multiple tiers) right to exercise any and all copyright, publicity, trademarks, database rights and intellectual property rights you have in the content, in any media known now or in the future”

This is really long-winded (which is often needed for legal documents unfortunately because “common sense” and “assumptions” are subjective and subjectivity does not work in a court of law) but it is basically saying “this is copyrighted to you but we are allowed to have it on our server; don’t sue us.” So if you upload a thumbnail of an item you’re selling to their marketplace, or just submit the title of your business or comic book title or something, and they have it on their database or website, you cannot sue them for them having your copyrighted logo/title/content on their website.

I’ve had to explain this so, SO many times to artists that signed my gallery’s contracts…. I don’t discourage this, by the way, because I think it’s important to be vigilant about your rights and content. When legalese is written broadly it’s to protect the business the vast majority of the time from being taken advantage of, but there is that percentage that will take advantage of others, so reading legal documents and learning how to understand them is important!!!!

This is why the NEXT section, Section 15.6, is most important and directly refers to Section 15.5, and should not have been left out of the original post:

“15.6 License Grant from Merchants to PayPal. Section 15.5 notwithstanding, if you are a Merchant using PayPal Merchant services, you hereby grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, transferable, sublicensable (through multiple tiers), and royalty-free right to use and display publicly, during the term of this Agreement, your trademark(s) (including but not limited to registered and unregistered trademarks, trade names, service marks, logos, domain names and other designations owned, licensed to or used by you) for the purpose of (1) identifying you as a merchant that accepts a PayPal service as a payment form, and (2) any other use to which you specifically consent.”

Section 15.6 directly limits the license (of using your business name, logo, item titles, descriptions) only to the Paypal services and sites that you have consented to. This mean they are not talking about selling your logo and your item thumbnail to an advertising firm or using it for any other means than having it available for the service you are using it for.

Hopefully that will help clear things up for y’all. :)

this is where I wish Laws would include a section that defines the reason or 'spirit' of the law, why it is going in place and what its indented use is for.

exactly as you said about the long winded part about copyright material should have a line under it saying exactly what you said
“this is copyrighted to you but we are allowed to have it on our server; don’t sue us.”

so when people try to abuse the word of the law. the judge can read the spirit of the law and make a decision based on that. the laws intended use.

Agree. I hate that you sometimes require a PhD in law to understand all the "pretty words" used in the legal documents.

I just wish people wouldn't use that as a way to abuse the letter of the law to get what they want or to cheat others.

Tumblr: filled with both the smartest and dumbest people.

This. Exactly. I already had to tell concerned people on three other sites about this.

Fuck, they may as well use proper Latin if they're going to speak legalese.

I was concerned Paypal was going to use my throbbing horse dick collection to sell Pepsi. :C

Nah, not Pepsi. Budweiser, maybe. At least, it's a product that has something to do with horse dicks :)

Ah, truth in advertising then, showing just where it was "delivered" from.

Strong icon to post content relation