Brandon Sanderson Fans
A community for fans of Brandon Sanderson!
1. Show respect to others
Every interaction in the community must be kind, respectful, and welcoming. No person should ever feel threatened, harassed, or unwelcome. Do not engage in hate speech, harassment, insults, personal attacks, trolling, or arguing in bad faith. Interpretation of this rule is subject to the moderators' discretion. Please remember the human.
2. Spoilers not permitted in post titles
Post titles must never reveal spoilers. This includes no direct quotes from the books. Title wording should be vague if necessary. Grey areas are up to the moderators' discretion.
3. Use spoiler markup for all spoiler posts
Please cover all spoiler posts in a spoiler tag. Simple posts like Sandershelves do not need to be spoilered. Posts/comments with major spoilers will be removed.
You spoiler tag like this:
::: SpoilerSpoiler Tag
message here
:::
in order to get:
Book Name Here
Stuff about the book in here
4. Post must be tagged for spoilers
All posts must be tagged to indicate the level of expected spoilers in the link/post and comments. The spoiler scope should include the name of the book or books, such as [Book Name] or [Book Series]. You may also say [No Spoilers] if you don't want any spoilers at all. Be as specific as possible. You can even say [Book Name Ch 34], for example.
5. No excessive reposting
Identical content may not be reposted within, by default, a two week period. This period may be adjusted at the moderators' discretion..
6. Posts must be on topic
Posts must be related to Brandon Sanderson or his works. Posts relating to sensitive topics (such as politics, religions, etc.) will be subject to greater scrutiny. Memes, shitposts, etc. are permitted so long as they are sufficiently relevant. Meta discussions related to the community are generally permitted. Self promotion for money is disallowed. Art, podcasts, videos and other such actual content is allowed.
7. Respect intellectual property
Piracy and copyright infringement are strictly forbidden. With some exceptions, all content must comply with Dragonsteel's licensing and fanart policies. Artwork must be attributed and may not be posted against the artist's wishes. Fan art should be marked as [OC] or credited to the original artist. If AI was used as a tool, please also mark the post [AI: Tool Used], for example [AI: Midjourney].
8. Leaked content is not permitted
Content which is released outside of Brandon Sanderson's wishes is not allowed under any circumstances. Pre-release content publicly released by Brandon, Dragonsteel Entertainment, or a publisher is okay if marked appropriately for spoilers.
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I don't think it's being manipulative, because it is extreme
This could mean, they could rerecord your book and sell their recording, or use the recording to make commercials, or any number of things you might find objectionable. There are no limits in the text of the TOS.
If my competitor tried this I would advertise that I don't abuse my customers too.
I don't think either of us are lawyers, so disputing the exact meaning of words in a contract is an invitation to nonsense.
I do know that rerecording and selling the copy would require them to have more copyright rights than would be called a limited license.
It's manipulation because they're overtly stating "we're not sure what they'll do, but it's probably so they can train AI on your books and make infinite shitty clones". That's emotionally manipulative, just like the title of this post.
The site itself has a clause in their public tos that gives them license to "worldwide license to reproduce, make available, perform and display, translate, modify, create derivative works from (such as transcripts of User Content), distribute, and otherwise use" the books they publish, they just phrase it in plain English.
I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know how substantial the difference is between the terms. It seems to me like both grant the distributor the right to make copies, sell them, make changes and advertise with the authors works.
This is an advertisement for a platform, trying to make you fear their competition. Any time they seem to make a solid claim, they couch it in a hypothetical or quote someone else. They make it clear that they don't actually know what the license says, just the "plain reading" "appears" "at a glance" "to seem" to have no limits.
It's inflammatory, manipulative, and trying to get right up to the edge of libel without actually doing so.
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.
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?)