[hackerspaces] Idea: things.hackerspaces.org now that Thingiverse is not ok anymore

[Walter van Holst]

On 2012-09-23 18:01, Sparr wrote:

> Has anyone gotten an actual lawyer's opinion of the new TOS?

As mentioned in my blog post, I am a lawyer. Not an attorney, mind you 
and not practicing in the USA either.


> I do not
> see that the new language is significantly different from the old
> language. The new TOS doesn't say they can use your designs to make
> new closed source hardware, they are still only allowed to use it to
> display it on their website.

No, it literally talks about "incorporate into other works, and 
otherwise use your User Content", per section 3.2 of the Terms of Use. 
As already quoted in my blog post. You could argue that the last bit of 
that sentence "solely for the purposes of including your User Content in 
the Site and Services" applies further than the sublicensing bit, but to 
me it reads rather ambiguously and I wouldn't feel safe to say it 
applies any further than the grant to sublicense. Not to say that the 
old terms weren't ambiguous either, but since they limited themselves to 
derivative works, it made life much easier because that is specifically 
a copyright term. On top of that the assertion about transmission and 
display in the old version read much broader.

And yes, natural languages are a pain, ambiguity-wise. But we have to 
make do with them.

Regards,

  Walter