Way back in March of this year, it was noticed that the video sharing site Vimeo had what seemed to be veeery flexible language in their terms of service. I still get a lot of blog hits on “vimeo terms” or “vimeo rights grab”, so I thought I’d go back again to see if they had tweaked their terms as promised. Last time I checked, no luck, but today I found they’ve added some new bolded wording to their page. Here’s the old terms:
By submitting your Submission to VIMEO, you hereby grant VIMEO and its affiliates, successors and assigns a worldwide, perpetual, non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, sub-licensable (through multiple tiers) and transferable license (with a right to create derivative works) to use, copy, transmit or otherwise distribute, perform, modify, incorporate into other works, publicly perform and display your Submission or any portion thereof, in or through any medium, whether now known or hereafter created. VIMEO shall be entitled to unrestricted use of any Submission for any purpose whatsoever, commercial or otherwise, without compensation to the submitter.
Well, I’m happy report that they seem to have finally made some changes to their wording, restricting the usage (commercial or otherwise) of your videos to the Vimeo site:
By submitting your video(s), you hereby grant VIMEO and its affiliates, successors and assigns a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sub-licensable (through multiple tiers) and transferable license (with a right to create derivative works to the extent necessary to make video content compatible with any Vimeo Services), revocable upon removing the video from Vimeo, to use, copy, transmit or otherwise distribute, perform, modify, incorporate into other works, publicly perform and display your videos or any portion thereof, in or through any medium, whether now known or hereafter created. VIMEO shall also be entitled to use clips of any video that has not been designated “private” for the purpose of promoting the Vimeo Site or Services, without compensation to the submitter; however, Vimeo will not use your videos for any other commercial purposes without obtaining your prior approval.
So, check it out. They are including language that states the license is revocable by you upon removal of said video, and, more importantly, a statement that they will not use your videos for any commercial use (aside from promotion of their site) without checking with you first. Any commercial purpose. Nice.
I think they made a good attempt at the next part:
You also grant each user (or specified users, if a video is designated “private”) of the Vimeo Site or Services a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, personal and non-commercial license to access and view your video through the Vimeo Site or any other access point authorized by you and/or VIMEO. This right to access and view your video shall include, solely to the extent necessary, the right to copy, transmit or otherwise distribute, perform, publicly perform, create derivative works of, and display your video.
This part is a bit confusing. The first sentence makes sense. You’re allowing the user to access and view the video. The second sentence should say something like:
Included in Vimeo’s royalty free license of your work is the right to copy, transmit … etc… and display your video, solely to the extent necessary to allow the user to access and view your video.
I think we know what they meant, and just got tripped up a bit in the wording. We don’t want to imply the user has the rights to make derivitive works or distribute the video, but that’s kind of how it reads.
So, I think they made an honest attempt to limit their terms of use a bit. I wouldn’t have a problem uploading to Vimeo now.
