Gobbler goes multi-platform, sign up before August 6th for your free 5GB account

[Sensorychaos]

Great new. Cool.

[pan60]

wow!
the Terms of Service do not impress me at all!

Therefore, by making your Customer Content available for uploading, posting, hosting or displaying through the Customer Content, you grant to Gobbler a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, sublicensable license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, transfer, display, perform, store, distribute and otherwise use the Customer Content,

this alone turns me off.
maybe i missed something?

How Do We Use the Personal Information We Collect?

We use personal information collected through our Site and the Service for the purposes described in this Policy or elsewhere on the Site. For example, we may use personal information we collect:

to provide the Services and the other service, products, or information you request, and to process and complete any transactions in connection therewith;
to request feedback and to otherwise contact you about your use of the Site and the Service;
to respond to your emails, submissions, questions, comments, requests, and complaints and provide customer service;
to monitor and analyze site usage and trends, and to personalize and improve the Site and the Service and our users' experiences on the Site and with the Service, such as providing ads, content, or features that match their profiles or interests, and to increase the functionality and user friendliness of the Site and the Service;
to provide you with news and information about our or third party events, activities, offers, promotions, products, and services we think will be of interest to you;
to send you confirmations, updates, security alerts, and support and administrative messages and otherwise facilitate your use of, and our administration and operation of, the Site and the Service;
to notify you about important changes to our Site an the Service;
to notify and contact contest and sweepstakes entrants; and
for any other purpose for which the information was collected.
We may store and process personal information in the United States and other countries.

not happinin!

[MikeProTools]

This whole issue came up on Gobbler's forums about a year ago. I have also had discussions with them because at first read it looks as if they can do anything with our stuff. However that isn't the aim. They need these terms of service to provide the service. If they are to handle our media they need permission. As to the use of personal data clauses quoted lets take a look at them.

to provide the Services and the other service, products, or information you request, and to process and complete any transactions in connection therewith;

This is so they can improve the service and make sure they can tell you about it.

to request feedback and to otherwise contact you about your use of the Site and the Service; to respond to your emails, submissions, questions, comments, requests, and complaints and provide customer service;

This is so they can communicate with you as to now to make things better.

to monitor and analyze site usage and trends, and to personalize and improve the Site and the Service and our users' experiences on the Site and with the Service, such as providing ads, content, or features that match their profiles or interests, and to increase the functionality and user friendliness of the Site and the Service;
to provide you with news and information about our or third party events, activities, offers, promotions, products, and services we think will be of interest to you;

OK this one is a little tougher but with a free service elsewhere we accept the delivery of ads in return for a free service. That said I haven't seen any ads but that may be because I am using the paid service.

to send you confirmations, updates, security alerts, and support and administrative messages and otherwise facilitate your use of, and our administration and operation of, the Site and the Service;
to notify you about important changes to our Site an the Service;

This is so they can keep in touch and keep you up to date.

to notify and contact contest and sweepstakes entrants; and for any other purpose for which the information was collected.

They run competitions etc on their site, so they need to be able to get in touch with you.

We may store and process personal information in the United States and other countries.

I am no lawyer but I guess this is a clause to cover themselves.

I am not connected with Gobbler other than a very early adaptor and have been working with them to improve the product. In my discussions and as you will see on their own forum they are trying to get the balance right between being able to provide the service and be able to communicate with us against being able to do whatever with our data. I have found them to be open and approachable so if you have concerns talk to them. Jump on their forum and have a discussion. It seems to me they are being open and honest about what they are doing.

Mike.

[Vytis]

Great news.

I get it regarding our personal information - pretty standard with a lot of online service providers, but still - what is that (thanks for the heads up Pan60!)...

Therefore, by making your Customer Content available for uploading, posting, hosting or displaying through the Customer Content, you grant to Gobbler a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, sublicensable license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, transfer, display, perform, store, distribute and otherwise use the Customer Content,

I'm not quite sure if my my clients would be cool knowing their latest feature film is being backed up under these terms? Hm. Can someone explain what that means?

[anon]

Originally Posted by pan60

wow!
the Terms of Service do not impress me at all!



this alone turns me off.
maybe i missed something?



not happinin!

I Totally agree, I complained about this a year ago and was told they would change them to something reasonable but they just never did, so I gave up and decided to not use them, I personally would avoid them until they take it seriously.

[anon]

Originally Posted by MikeProTools

This whole issue came up on Gobbler's forums about a year ago. I have also had discussions with them because at first read it looks as if they can do anything with our stuff. However that isn't the aim. They need these terms of service to provide the service. If they are to handle our media they need permission. As to the use of personal data clauses quoted lets take a look at them.


This is so they can improve the service and make sure they can tell you about it.

This is so they can communicate with you as to now to make things better.

OK this one is a little tougher but with a free service elsewhere we accept the delivery of ads in return for a free service. That said I haven't seen any ads but that may be because I am using the paid service.

This is so they can keep in touch and keep you up to date.

They run competitions etc on their site, so they need to be able to get in touch with you.

I am no lawyer but I guess this is a clause to cover themselves.

I am not connected with Gobbler other than a very early adaptor and have been working with them to improve the product. In my discussions and as you will see on their own forum they are trying to get the balance right between being able to provide the service and be able to communicate with us against being able to do whatever with our data. I have found them to be open and approachable so if you have concerns talk to them. Jump on their forum and have a discussion. It seems to me they are being open and honest about what they are doing.

Mike.

Mike I can assure you that the way the terms are worded are not required to run this service, they are way way over the top, and it is something that anyone wanting to protect their or their clients creative work should take very seriously.

[Vytis]

Found this on the Gobbler website...

Rights and licensing question

Still not quite convinced that it's necessary to use such wordings...
Most of my clients would most definitely not allow their content to be reproduced, adapted, modified, translated, published, transferred, displayed, performed, stored, distributed and otherwise used under these conditions.

[BlackBackDrop]

Those terms are insane!

[anon]

Originally Posted by BlackBackDrop

Those terms are insane!

Yes they are, but what is really worrying is I pointed this out to them over a year ago and they still don't seem to want to sort it out, the question is why?

I would love to use a service like this, but not unless I am able to have complete trust is them.

[George Necola]

Originally Posted by anon

Yes they are, but what is really worrying is I pointed this out to them over a year ago and they still don't seem to want to sort it out, the question is why?

I would love to use a service like this, but not unless I am able to have complete trust is them.

Problem is, all cloud services (dropbox, mydrive...) have similar terms and conditions. Don't trust the cloud if you want to have a secure backup and keep the files and property for yourself.

Btw dropbox offers 50 gigs for free for 2 years now.

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[hct]

Originally Posted by George Necola

Problem is, all cloud services (dropbox, mydrive...) have similar terms and conditions.

Can you point us to terms in which a user grants sublicensable (sic!) license for all content to dropbox/mydrive? To adapt, publish and otherwise use?

There are obvious rights user has to grant to cloud service provider. The right to copy is the one for example. But these terms are certainly over the top of anything I've seen so far.

Originally Posted by George Necola

Don't trust the cloud if you want to have a secure backup and keep the files and property for yourself.

That's another story. I personally don't trust anything online enough to call it secure.

[George Necola]

Originally Posted by hct

Can you point us to terms in which a user grants sublicensable (sic!) license for all content to dropbox/mydrive? To adapt, publish and otherwise use?

There are obvious rights user has to grant to cloud service provider. The right to copy is the one for example. But these terms are certainly over the top of anything I've seen so far.



That's another story. I personally don't trust anything online enough to call it secure.

Google drive is well documented online.

As to who owns what and why I really don't know. I am system engineer not a lawyer. Matter of fact is, that if you run into a copyright trouble with a US based software company, uncle Sam shows you his middle finger...

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[Gobbler Press]

Hi Everyone,

This is Chris Kantrowitz the CEO of Gobbler. I wanted to take this opportunity to address your concerns about our TOS.

I'll get into the legal first but before I do. I think it is important to know who we are as a company and what we stand for. We are media creators just like you. We are not an anonymous band of tech folks looking to find ways to take artists work and make money off of it, look at it, or give it to our friends. We started Gobbler because the people we work with were losing their art due to hard drive failures, lost drives ect. We all know the stories. It was shocking to us to see how often the talented people we know were having to start over because sessions were lost.

I have had the good fortune of spending the last 6 years designing concerts for some of the top artists in the world with my company Frank The Plumber (<--Frank The Plumber-->). My career in this business is only possible because of the trust built between myself and the artists we work with. We work with artists directly each and every year. Music is in our soul and our reputation is everything. Gobbler is a service built by media creators for media creators. $4M has been spent to date building the Gobbler service. It would be money thrown out the door the second we as a company decided to take the files of any of our users. Along with that it would very likely end my career as a concert designer... Something I would sorely miss.

Last year we did get questions about our TOS so I contact our lawyers and asked them to rework it so it gave us the minimum rights required for us to legally run our business.

The TOS we currently have reflects that.

There are always a few key portions of the TOS which get people concerned. So I will address them.

Worldwide = Gobbler provides a globally-available service.
Non-Exclusive = Gobbler can't and won’t prevent you from licensing your data in other ways.
Royalty-Free = You won't charge us for this
Sublicensable = Gobbler need to allow technology partners to copy your data too ie. Amazon where our data is hosted.

We make it clear that Gobbler is invoking this licence only for the purposes of providing the service to users. And that is the scope. The license is for us to provide the service. It does not give us the license to go and sell work if we did that it would be theft and a crime. Gobbler is not a front company for a criminal organization. We have artists who are directly involved in our company. John Legend has joined our board of advisors

Gobbler Hooks Up With Box for More Cloud-Storage Options - Lauren Goode - D10 - AllThingsD

Jared Leto of 30 Seconds to mars has invested in our company. These folks know us we have worked with them and they trust us with their files.

Here is a whole list of other people who trust us.

User Stories | Gobbler Blog

Darryll Thorpe in his video specifically says he doesn’t trust commercial providers but he trusts us. We didn’t hypnotize him or pay him :-).

I understand that the wording in these TOSs seem to ask for a lot but it’s the language required for us to legally run our business. Unfortunately there is nothing we can do about the law. But like I said the language does limit us to rights which allows us to provide the service.

We are a venture backed company with artists all over the world using our product. Our investors are respected and have made a bet on a company that hopes to make media creators lives better. One criminal act and all of the work put into the company is done and over. Word would spread like wildfire and we’d never get anyones trust back.

If you chose not to trust the cloud then you should not use the internet. The internet is the cloud. Almost all mail is cloud based. If you use gmail here are the terms of services you agree to:

Your Content in our Services (GOOGLE TOS FOR GMAIL)

Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.
When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps). Some Services may offer you ways to access and remove content that has been provided to that Service. Also, in some of our Services, there are terms or settings that narrow the scope of our use of the content submitted in those Services. Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to our Services.
You can find more information about how Google uses and stores content in the privacy policy or additional terms for particular Services. If you submit feedback or suggestions about our Services, we may use your feedback or suggestions without obligation to you.


Here is our license:

Limited License to Customer Content. You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in your Customer Content, except as otherwise specifically provided in this Agreement. However, Gobbler needs certain rights to store, transmit, adapt and otherwise use the Customer Content you provide in order to provide you with the Services. Therefore, by making your Customer Content available for uploading, posting, hosting or displaying through the Customer Content, you grant to Gobbler a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, sublicensable license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, transfer, display, perform, store, distribute and otherwise use the Customer Content, solely for the purpose of enabling Gobbler to provide the Service. This license in no way affects the private nature of information you post. You may terminate this license with respect to any particular Customer Content posted to the Site by deleting the information from the Service, except that in the event that another party using the Services has saved the Customer Content and is storing it through the Service, then the license shall continue as needed to continue to provide the Service to such party. Except as terminated as provided herein, the license will be perpetual and irrevocable.

Note a few things:

The section is called a Limited License to Customer Content. Not a License. In the first sentence we state. “ You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in your Customer Content” we make it clear you are the rights holder. We then state we need “certain rights” not all rights just the ones needed for us to “store, transmit, adapt and otherwise use the Customer content in order to provide you with the Services” We define those services at “a proprietary audio file storage and management system that enables customers to store, manage, organize and transfer their audio files (the "Service").” That is what the license allows us to do.

Here is yousendit’s TOS:

YouSendIt does not claim any ownership rights in any User Files that you make available through the Services. However, by making User Files available through the Services, you grant YouSendIt the nonexclusive, worldwide, transferable right, on a royalty-free basis, with a right to sublicense this right only to third parties assisting YouSendIt in providing the Services to use, copy, distribute and process User Files through the Services on your behalf and on behalf of your customers for the purposes of providing you with the Services and administering your requests, including without limitation, facilitating the secure storage, transfer, and delivery of such User Files.

If you use gmail, yahoo mail, hotmail, aol mail, yousendit or any services on the internet where a file is transmitted then these are the TOS’s you are asked to agree to.

Some will say. I’ll just use FTP then. If your FTP is hosted at a place like GoDaddy then you agree to the following terms:

“With Respect to User Content (Other Than User Submissions).
If you have a website hosted by Go Daddy or another service provider, you shall retain all of your ownership or licensed rights in User Content posted to your website.
However, if you post or publish your User Content to this Site, you authorize Go Daddy to use the intellectual property and other proprietary rights in and to your User Content to enable inclusion and use of the User Content in the manner contemplated by this Site and this Agreement. Accordingly, you hereby grant Go Daddy a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable (through multiple tiers), and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, combine with other works, display, and perform your User Content in connection with this Site and Go Daddy’s (and Go Daddy’s affiliates’) business(es), including without limitation for promoting and redistributing all or part of this Site in any media formats and through any media channels without restrictions of any kind and without payment or other consideration of any kind, or permission or notification, to you or any third party. You also hereby grant each User of this Site a non-exclusive license to access your User Content (with the exception of User Content that you designate “private” or “password protected”) through this Site, and to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, combine with other works, display, and perform your User Content as permitted through the functionality of this Site and under this Agreement. The above licenses granted by you in your User Content terminate within a commercially reasonable time after you remove or delete your User Content from this Site. You understand and agree, however, that Go Daddy may retain (but not distribute, display, or perform) server copies of your User Content that have been removed or deleted. The above licenses granted by you in your User Content are perpetual and irrevocable. Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained herein, Go Daddy shall not use any User Content that has been designated “private” or “password protected” by you for the purpose of promoting this Site or Go Daddy’s (or Go Daddy’s affiliates’) business(es).

I know this is a long answer but I want to make it clear to anyone who reads this that we are not asking for anything more then we need to run the business. Once you understand that then it’s always important to know who you are doing business with. If you don’t think Gobbler as an organization is trustworthy then all I can ask you to do is watch us, keep an eye on our company as we grow, look to see who uses us and know that we are in this for the long haul. We love what we do and we want to be around for a long time. Trust but verify, that’s a good way to look at life.

If you actually read this entire response you are a hero. Thank you for taking the time to do so.

Chris

[Solar]

@Chris

Well documented and said Chris. Glad you've taken the time to respond and clear things up for those who had concerns. So indeed for those who still be worrying after reading your answer, I suggest to look else where because thats the beauty of this new era of Technlogy "competitors". But One thing I can assure you folks, these guys at Gobbler are doing tremendous, serious & honest work to become the Best for those (Pro, Semi Pro, Beginners) aiming for reliability, security, great support & Team.

Choices are Open.

Good Luck folks

[Football]

Hey Chris, that response got you at least one new customer

[pan60]

Chris, i'll shoot you a p.m. with my email, send me a note and lets chat.
pan

[George Necola]

cool. I'm a system engineer, so I don't trust the internet, only my LAN I wish you the best of luck with your company.

I am all positive that you will find enough artists to use your product instead of their own backup at home/studio.

let us know how it's going.

cheers George

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