Important Cafepress Tos Change

Talesin

Thought it'd be more likely to be seen here by those who could do something.

CafePress is changing their TOS again, pulling a number of shady actions... among them, taking hold of any trademarks, copyrights, or other legal ownership of any images or logos being used on any merchandise with their service on <b>July 1st, 2003</b>. I'd suggest pulling down all the NS gear from their site ASAP.

Link with info on the pertinent changes:
<a href='http://www.giveneyestosee.com/say-no-to-cafepress/' target='_blank'>http://www.giveneyestosee.com/say-no-to-cafepress/</a>

Nemesis_Zero

I'd really like to know how they manage to look into the mirror each morning.

MonsieurEvil

Jeebus H. Christmas!

Forwarded this on to Flayra. Does anyone know any alternative outlets for this sort of thing?

Nemesis_Zero

I think Relic has his own stuff at a store called 'Pixeltees' or something along those lines. Not sure whether they'd be willing to carry this kind of merchandize, though.

Talesin

IIRC, Ramses was considering putting some stuff up there as well. May post something a little more general, after the stuff has been safely dealt with.
And yeah.. Cafepress is almost as bad as paypal, for the sheer number of... borderline things they've tried to pull off in the past.

So... would this belong in General Discussion (explaining why the NS stuff was pulled, as well as handing out the link for others) or Off-Topic, not being specifically NS related? Wanna make sure as many people know about this as possible, so no one gets bitten by a lawyer without knowing it's gonna happen. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->

BathroomMonkey

Holy *&%$@#!

Yeah, it'd be a nice heads up to spread the word on that . . . that's amazing. Unreal. I can't believe a company would be so utterly evil and greedy as to try to slide this by their customers. I hope this bankrupts them . . .

Makes me wonder-- if they claim to take ownership of your copyrights, does that mean that if you could sneak on there and sell someone something with another company's logo/gfx, that the abused company could turn around and sue cafe press for infringing upon their trademark? There's got to be <i>some</i> way to screw them here . . .

Talesin

No... what would happen in that instance is that CafePress would sue the person who slipped on, as they never owned the copyright in the first place, which thereby breaks their TOS of giving up all copyright claim. Possibly the company whose logo was snagged might sue the person as well, or CafePress if they (somehow) tried to pursue claims over the copyright without a legal leg to stand on... it's much more likely that they'd simply back off and sue the person who had put the contested merchandise up.

BathroomMonkey

Ok, Then <b>you</b> think of something, ****!

<!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->

coil

The primary Connecticut swing site, www.swingmonkey.com , also runs a cafepress store. I informed my fellow admin (who takes care of the store) of the impending change. He called tech support, and the woman he talked to very much shared his opinion of "wt f?" She said she'd be calling her superiors to ask what exactly is happening.

It *does* make sense - they are protecting themselves from various forms of copyright abuse, including parody concerns (e.g. the Penny Arcade "Strawberry Shortcake" fiasco). Unfortunately, it appears this action has the side effect of stealing intellectual from all of its clients. An added concern is the fact that many clients, including my friend with his Swingmonkey merchandise, already *own* copyright on their graphics.

I have a feeling this will be straightened out... I'll keep y'all updated on what I find out.

Nemesis_Zero

Sorry, but claiming that drawing <i>all</i> intellectual property without of even widely publishing the effort is necessary to protect themselves against possible copyright abuse (of products which they currently don't even <i>have</i> the copyrights for) is flat-out ridiculous.
This move changes CPs position from a simple retailer of other peoples property (who give them the license to publish their work for a share of the profit) to the licenser who <i>allows</i> people to sell their <i>own</i> creations.

Flayra

I can't believe that they can do this. I find it very hard to believe that they can simply declare that they own all the intellectual property and copyrights to the work in their store. If they tried to enforce this, I bet it wouldn't hold up. I'll have my trademark lawyer look at this and see if it's worth tearing down the store. Thanks for the info.

Flayra

From my trademark lawyer:
-

Found this on MeFi
<a href='http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/26195' target='_blank'>http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/26195</a>

They actually have clarification about the copyright issue on the site. It's
in a javascript popup so I can't link to it, but this is what it says, in
part:

----

There is some mis-information spreading that we are taking over and stealing
everyones content. So we want to clarify and make sure everyone understands
that this is absolutely NOT TRUE. We know that the language of lawyers
(legalese) is indeed foreign to most of us - so we would like do a step by
step explanation on clauses 6.1 - 6.3. Please let us know if anyone has any
questions!

6.1 ...
This clause basically states that CafePress owns the rights to the Web site
and service - and that we have the right to register and protect the
trademarks and copyrights to our service. This clause has nothing to do with
the content provided by our members.

6.2 ...
This clause gives us the rights we need to produce and ship the items you
want to sell through our service. You give us a royalty-free and
non-exclusive right - which means we don't pay a licensing fee for the
artwork/content and our agreement is non-exclusive. This clause points out
you are the owner of your trademarks, names, designs and logos.

6.3 ...
We run ads and promotions to drive traffic to our member's stores - and when
we do so and promote your store - we have to credit you as the owner of your
artwork. The last line specifically says "CafePress.com will not represent
ownership of any of your designs."

Jefe

Woah...that's reasurring... It'd be too much chaos for me to handle if that went through. That's why I have my bomb shelter.

Thansal

hehe, as much as I dislike CP, I knew that didn't sound right

it is again the case of some one trying to be a lawyer and failing.

There is no way they could do what that guy was claiming they ere doing (look over those sections, they are kinda hard but if you look hard enugh you will probably understand)


personaly the parts I don't like are the way they charge their customers <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> (making money off of CP is nearly imopssible as far as I know)

CplDavis

holy crap at least one disaster has been averted.

Smoke_Nova

damn laywa's. they should all be forced to speak english, not Lawees.

Good job getting it settled Flayra.

coil

One more caveat, though, Flayra... they've also changed their charging policy. I'm not sure of the details of it, but there are two elements:

1) Every 180 days, Cafepress charges up to $25 to any account with a non-zero balance, subtracting up to $25 dollars from that account (to a minimum of $0). I'm not entirely sure about the reason for this, but I'm told it's required for taxation purposes. CafePress also has stores that have been open since the site went up, but have never been able to collect because they gave CP no address to send the checks to. While this is fine for large-volume stores, this presents problems for stores that might not make $25 in 6 months. As $25 is the minimum payout (i.e. they cut you a check when you hit $25), stores that don't reach $25 in 6 months will have a net 0 gain.

2) Cafepress charges a store $X for each item - the store makes a profit based on whatever they charge over that $X (e.g. Cafepress charges $10 for a shirt, which the store sells for $15 - net profit of $5). As of July 1, Cafepress will charge an additional 5% on that profit margin - that $5 will drop to $4.75.

Again, these are mostly concerns for low-volume stores; i don't know how well the NS Store does. To everyone else: buy NS swag!