Spotify Modifies Terms for Audiobook Rightsholders, Changes May Put Authors in Legal Peril With Narrators
storyfair.net
StoryFair Audiobooks launches a better, fairer way to to buy audiobooks. On StoryFair, authors now receive the highest royalty anywhere.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/12029451

Spotify just changed their TOS, giving them unprecedented rights to create “derivative works” from audiobooks

They frame it as though it’s for user content, more likely it’s to train AI, but in fact it gives them the right to do almost anything they want - up to (but not including) stealing the content outright.

  • bane_killgrind@kbin.social
    1·
    9 months ago

    I’m not a lawyer you are right, but I do deal with CCDC contracts as part of my job. A big part of the scope of a contract is what it includes and what it states it excludes. Exclusions usually come when there is some sort of implied inclusion in another part of the contract, as an example a term like “will be made to interoperate with” might imply a contractor would provide power circuits, licensing, subscriptions etc, and the exclusions would state that recurring expenditures would be outside the scope of the contract or something.

    The storyfair terms are specifically referencing and including activities storyfair is accomplishing, and only referencing things that are specifically to accomplish selling the piece of media.

    The Spotify terms are granting Spotify partners the ability to use the media in an unlimited and derogatory way, it’s specifically including “irrevocable”, “sublicencable” and “transferable”. These three words are actually huge changes in the terms.

    • ricecake
      1·
      9 months ago

      So, I started looking up some words in the legal sense, since “a contract that can’t end” seems crazy.
      It looks like irrevocable in this context means you can only terminate the license according to the rules agreed upon, not for no reason at any time.
      The derogatory bit appears to mean you can’t sue them if you dislike one of the minor edits they made.

      I’m not a lawyer though, so I’m going to stop trying to interpret license terms, because if nothing else it’s far from my original point.

      I have no idea if the terms are good or bad, or even when the change happened.
      What I do know, is that I would expect more attention given to it if it were as bad as it’s being made out to be, and from sources beyond one of their competitors.
      I don’t trust people using emotionally manipulative language and weasel words to try to persuade me, even if they’re entirely correct. (If it’s as bad as they say, why not actually get their lawyer to provide an explanation, rather than clarifying that they aren’t lawyers and are only guessing?)