Hi gang,
So, got into a fun argument with someone the other day for calling him out on sharing a "free" online tools website after I had carefully read the websites policies. Policies which heavily contradicted themselves by claiming that "sure, you remain the owner of your media" (without mentioning any legal rights!) only to state further down the line that by accepting their policy (which you automatically did when using their services..). Anyway, by doing so you'd also be forced to comply to their decisions regarding your media, and you also forfeit your rights to any protests towards the company as well; they got the final say in everything. Well, that was talking to a brick wall, seems the dude took my comments personally.
Anywhoo, in my opinion the topic still deserves some attention so I figured I'd drop by here... been a while since I was active here anyway (blame the hot weather for that, I'm having some health issues because of all that).
I get it... you can't or won't spent a lot of money on software licenses and suddenly you come across this website that provides free services! All you have to do (!) is to upload your stuff to their website after which they'll help to make it "better". And sure, most of the time nothing bad is going to happen. Besides, it's your stuff to begin with, right? Don't be such a drama queen!
If that's your line of thinking then ... you're taking huge risks which will come to bite you when you least expect it to happen. Because there is no such thing as free, and most websites (and the companies behind them!) have their own agendas. At the very least always go look for their policies: their user agreements, their privacy statements, anything that will tell you exactly where you stand in all this. Then also don't be lazy by just glossing over the parts that suit you ("All the rights belong to you", I'm safe!) but continue digging until you get the complete picture, not just some random snippet which could even be taken out of context.
Like I said... it's very likely that nothing is going to happen. Until it does...
Lame companies with lame policies
The reason I'm somewhat raising a bit of drama is because I've seen things like this go from bad to worse. An online friend of mine who I met through the Ableton communities actually found out what can happen (Ableton is a multimedia company, we are both vivid users of their "Ableton Live" DAW). He worked for months on a cool melody, that turned into a bit of a song and he even asked me for some advice regarding the "mixing and mastering" process. What he didn't tell anyone (also because he had forgotten about this) was that he also ran the final product through some "mastering website", just to see how much better it would sound. When he realized that there was room open for improvement he contacted me.
Alas... one thing led to another and eventually he actually put up the song on a commercial website. Nothing fancy, sold copies for just a few euros. This went fine for a few months, when suddenly he got slammed with a DMCA; some unknown company claimed that he was abusing their rights to the song and ordered him to stop selling it. They even claimed damages from his allegid "illegal sales".
This dragged on for a while but eventually it became quite clear that this company was involved with the "free mastering website", and by using that site my friend had agreed to some pretty restrictive usage policies. He did lawyer up, but in the end it would only have cost him a lot of money so they eventually settled.
Needless to say that his motivation took a serious blow that day.
All of this happened several years ago, but it's still very much relevant today. Especially now that you got the most bizarre AI powered websites out there which promise you everything while also carefully trying to hide their true (legal) motives.
SO yah... shout out to all of you fine folks here... please be careful before you blindly put your trust in some website, just because it's free and useful. Always check the fineprint!
Thanks for reading!
So, got into a fun argument with someone the other day for calling him out on sharing a "free" online tools website after I had carefully read the websites policies. Policies which heavily contradicted themselves by claiming that "sure, you remain the owner of your media" (without mentioning any legal rights!) only to state further down the line that by accepting their policy (which you automatically did when using their services..). Anyway, by doing so you'd also be forced to comply to their decisions regarding your media, and you also forfeit your rights to any protests towards the company as well; they got the final say in everything. Well, that was talking to a brick wall, seems the dude took my comments personally.
Anywhoo, in my opinion the topic still deserves some attention so I figured I'd drop by here... been a while since I was active here anyway (blame the hot weather for that, I'm having some health issues because of all that).
Don't blindly trust "free" online services!
...especially when we're talking about multimedia material!I get it... you can't or won't spent a lot of money on software licenses and suddenly you come across this website that provides free services! All you have to do (!) is to upload your stuff to their website after which they'll help to make it "better". And sure, most of the time nothing bad is going to happen. Besides, it's your stuff to begin with, right? Don't be such a drama queen!
If that's your line of thinking then ... you're taking huge risks which will come to bite you when you least expect it to happen. Because there is no such thing as free, and most websites (and the companies behind them!) have their own agendas. At the very least always go look for their policies: their user agreements, their privacy statements, anything that will tell you exactly where you stand in all this. Then also don't be lazy by just glossing over the parts that suit you ("All the rights belong to you", I'm safe!) but continue digging until you get the complete picture, not just some random snippet which could even be taken out of context.
Like I said... it's very likely that nothing is going to happen. Until it does...
Lame companies with lame policies
The reason I'm somewhat raising a bit of drama is because I've seen things like this go from bad to worse. An online friend of mine who I met through the Ableton communities actually found out what can happen (Ableton is a multimedia company, we are both vivid users of their "Ableton Live" DAW). He worked for months on a cool melody, that turned into a bit of a song and he even asked me for some advice regarding the "mixing and mastering" process. What he didn't tell anyone (also because he had forgotten about this) was that he also ran the final product through some "mastering website", just to see how much better it would sound. When he realized that there was room open for improvement he contacted me.
Alas... one thing led to another and eventually he actually put up the song on a commercial website. Nothing fancy, sold copies for just a few euros. This went fine for a few months, when suddenly he got slammed with a DMCA; some unknown company claimed that he was abusing their rights to the song and ordered him to stop selling it. They even claimed damages from his allegid "illegal sales".
This dragged on for a while but eventually it became quite clear that this company was involved with the "free mastering website", and by using that site my friend had agreed to some pretty restrictive usage policies. He did lawyer up, but in the end it would only have cost him a lot of money so they eventually settled.
Needless to say that his motivation took a serious blow that day.
All of this happened several years ago, but it's still very much relevant today. Especially now that you got the most bizarre AI powered websites out there which promise you everything while also carefully trying to hide their true (legal) motives.
SO yah... shout out to all of you fine folks here... please be careful before you blindly put your trust in some website, just because it's free and useful. Always check the fineprint!
Thanks for reading!
