James Dasher - Likes

From what my friends are telling me Vimeo's new TOS says they have the right to do whatever they want with your videos. That's horrible for people who are trying to build content businesses. - Robert Scoble

40 more comments

*sigh* And yet another service to delete my account on. - Jon, the Chilled Beartato

BTW: I'm using TubeMogul, but never posted to Vimeo because I like using HD and Vimeo has too restrictive a cap on HD videos. If you're doing video and not using TubeMogul to distribute your stuff you really are missing out. - Robert Scoble

Sheesh. And here I was, enjoying what they were doing. - Mike Nayyar

I agree, you really have to be everywhere. Gives different communities the chance to see your work. - deakaz

I have no idea what their TOS is like, but their new video is hilarious http://vimeo.com/3718294 - Richard Lawler

http://seanlockedigitalimagery... has some details on Vimeo. Yup, it is indeed as bad as Scott says. That's a horrid TOS. Compare, for instance, to SmugMug's TOS which says exactly the opposite. - Robert Scoble

Maybe that's what it takes to accomidate for creative commons licensing. Vimeo has been great for those of us not trying to build a business on content. - Christian Burns

Seems every site has to go through this "learning-curve" before they get it right. Vimeo's response has been excessively poor. Look's like self-hosting one's content is the only long-term solution. - Robert Kenney

The bottom line of anything is host it yourself or deal with TOS issues. Pretty sure most online video sites have the save clause in their TOSes. - El Freak

You'd think companies like this would learn from each others mistakes. Look at the flap Facebook got over changing their terms. Same with Google a while back. I'm sure that Vimeo will/should be pressured to do the same - Kevin Kuphal

El: SmugMug doesn't. - Robert Scoble

Scott Bourne runs the very influential "This Week in Photography" by the way. Has hundreds of thousands of listeners and is very popular. Pissing off someone like him is not a smart business plan, seems to me. - Robert Scoble

Like Robert Kenney said, the self-hosting looks better all the time. That said, you can use a service like Amazon S3 for the heavy storage lifting (granted, may not scale bandwidth cost-wise depending on consumption factors). SmugMug is great for (presently on pro account) 10 minute and under clips. - Micah Wittman

What I don't understand is, why does vimeo need to own the content uploaded to them? - Jon, the Chilled Beartato

El: why would you make an uninformed assertion that slows discourse when you can just quickly do the research, where you'd have seen that you're wrong and then not made that point at all? - Matthew DeVries

I like Blip, too. Nicest player I've seen out there. I'm also using Kyte a lot. Gotta go and compare the TOS's of those. SmugMug really rocks and uses Amazon S3 a lot anyway. - Robert Scoble

Flickr does video too now. - Matthew DeVries

Jonathan: at Microsoft when stuff like this happened it usually was just a lawyer trying to protect the company from all lawsuits. I doubt that Vimeo really wants to sell my videos to some other site, but the lawyers usually are in CYA mode, not thinking about what's appropriate for the business. I like SmugMug for that reason: they are a family run business and think about the impacts of this stuff first before setting lawyers loose. - Robert Scoble

You're gonna need to talk really fast to host video on Flickr and get a point across - Kevin Kuphal

Kevin: the industry is really settling on 10 minute videos for the free sites. I've found that lately I'm really trying to keep my interviews and such under the 10 minute mark so that they'll go everywhere. Plus, with HD, the file sizes get so nutty big that 10 minutes is about the limit anyway. - Robert Scoble

SmugMug allows 20 minutes, though. YouTube: 10. Facebook: 20. Blip: longer, not sure how long. Kyte: longer, if you have a pro account. - Robert Scoble

Robert: That's awesome that SmugMug does that. I suppose it will be a matter of time then before these companies notice that no one is hosting content through them because of their TOSs. Although, that may just be a naive assertion on my part. - Jon, the Chilled Beartato

Vimeos response has been horrific. They posted a pretty pathetic response on their own forums, then locked the thread... wonder how long until they delete the thread... I love the Vimeo service, but this response really is making me re-think vimeo. Check out the thread: http://www.vimeo.com/forums... - Juan Pons

Never used Vimeo - Patrick from twhirl

smugmug is my choice for posting videos - planetMitch

While I understand the message it sends to its users, these types of license agreements are of dubious enforceability. I'd love to see what would happen should someone sue Vimeo over it: my money is on the plaintiff. - Mark Trapp

Thanks Robert for bringing this to a broader audience! Vimeos response to the issue so far has been ridiculous. I'm hoping that - at some point in the future - companies will realise that these kind of TOS are bad for them. Looking into Smugmug for an upcoming project now... - Holger Eilhard

The companies response is ridiculous, reposting a boilerplate message and then closing the thread is hardly appropriate. Here's hoping the outcry is loud enough that they listen. I don't even use them at this point, but that kind of legal bs, pisses me off! - James Dasher

It's this kind of thing that proves to me that most companies are going to stay away from cloud services for a while longer. - Kenton

I have posted the Vimeo issue to GetSatisfaction in hopes of generating an actual response from their management. http://bit.ly/rmamf - Malevolent Robot

I find it interesting that companies in the user generated contant space keep rolling out these overally broad TOS clauses, smacks of a lazy legal team - Bill Pennington from twhirl

That's a disappointing change in position. I originally signed up for Vimeo years ago *specifically* because they did not claim ownership of my content. Now they're claiming "legal reasons and technical realities". Another company grows too complacent to serve its users... - Dan Byler

My friend Aaron Hockley did a talk at Ignite Portland 5 on the varying levels of egregious licence agreements among online services, like Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, etc. Though the norm is pretty biased against the user, he said that Vimeo was a little better than usual. Too bad to see them change. You can watch Aaron's talk at http://www.igniteportland.com/watch or http://linuxaid.blip.tv. - Josh Bancroft

ha ha, they keep repeating the same message, over and over to each complaint on their forum. like drones. - TranceMist

Trance: Pretty sure that is people just requoting there response, it looks like repeating but if you look at it you will see it is quoted from the original - Bill Pennington from twhirl

censorship sucks. It's too bad that vimeo locked the thread where people were complaining about this. - Thomas Hawk

Threadlocking should be considered the legal equivalent of a signed confession that the company is wrong. - Matthew DeVries

how incredibly lame - Susan Beebe

hope vimeo is changing their tos as I recently heard. Smugsmug is great but completely different and takes a pricy pro-account to upload hd video.. and since I got all my pictures on photoshelter anyway, I don't need the picture-features of smugsmug.. so Vimeo used to be the perfect place for creative videos by now.. - Dan van Moll

Vimeo has locked their forum where this was being discussed. http://vimeo.com/forums... OTOH, they have stated that they're reviewing their ToS. The essence of Vimeo's response is "you can leave any time you like," which seems a really bad message to send. My commentary: http://www.techbreakfast.net/2009... - Mistletoe Glen

Say what you will about this being a legalese for them, but locking the thread is a huge mistake. I can understand why Vimeo doesn't want other customers to see the thread, but preventing them from commenting seems heavy handed and makes me doubt how willing they'll be to listen to consumers on this one. - Davis Freeberg

James Dasher › Likes