CRAZY Legal Terms!! (Maybe Not Too Far Off Topic)
Sockratease
Posts: 813
I just got a new digital camera. My plan was to take pictures of stuff to sell on ebay and such.
I also planned on taking some pics for textures, giving them away at first, followed by a set for sale if the freebies go over well.
Well...
On the very first page of the camera manual it says "Images taken with this camera are intended for personal use"
...
Ummm...
That's CRAZY!!
I refused to believe that they would make a camera, then restrict commercial use - so I called.
They assured me commercial use was OK.
Being me, I demanded it in writing from their legal department, and told them if I did not receive it within 29 days, I would return the camera (I have 30 days for that). I also told them that I advise their legal department, in the strongest possible terms, to change the wording in the manual!
I know they need to protect themselves, but ... SHEESH!
What a world...
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Comments
Over a century ago T. A. Edison tried to claim Cr on everything produced from his patented motion picture camera.
So why not float something like a non commercial clause as an opening to a claim?
Because it's CRAZY!
And people think I am crazy for constantly demanding DAZ release The Millennium Cow!!
This makes me appear positively Rational by comparison.
Because it's CRAZY!
And people think I am crazy for constantly demanding DAZ release The Millennium Cow!!
This makes me appear positively Rational by comparison.
I added myself, too, on the request for The Millennium Cow !!
I added myself, too, on the request for The Millennium Cow !!
YAY!!
As soon as The Daz Cow gives me back my teapot, I'll invite you over for tea and we can take some pictures :coolsmile:
My day job is in sales for large industrial equipment. Part of my job is to read contract conditions. (Big Sigh!) And I can certainly tell you the world has indeed gone crazy.
In my field Contract documents try to make the supplier responsible for every possible problem imaginable i.e., "worst case" (God I hate that term!) and deny all responsibility of the purchaser. Therefore suppliers write their own conditions of sale which basically try to limit their responsibility especially in the case of the purchasers negligence or ignorance (or most cases stupidity), It's a viscous war that you have only just glimpse the tip of the iceberg.
I'm guessing the camera company legal person was over-thinking the situation and decided that if you take a photo of someone on the street then use their image without their permission in a advert and then that person will come after you with their lawyers and maybe the company that made the camera as well for not advising you that you can't do that. Yer it sound stupid but that's the type of world we live in now.
The bare bones of the legal documents is it's all about ass covering and the deeper you go into it the bigger the can of worms you have crawling up your butt.
I have only glimpse Daz terms and regardless of what they say, if I want to use their product I have no choice but the check that box saying I agree with them. Choice is an illusion little Neo, the Matrix has us all. Anyhoot it's the same with any software company; Microsoft Widows can still be classified as software "under development" and all that it implies.......
I am hoping that by personal use only, they were simply saying it was not up to proffesional quality.
just like a "PC" is a personal computer and you can indeed use Windows home products for commercial purposes but they have commercial versions tailored fir it.
it also could be a tax thing for claiming the camera as work equipment.
LOL That's great!
Why? I think it is nice. That sentence is not even a directive for action. The camera manufacturer just lets you know, what the camera is best to be used for (in their opinion). Often manuals in fact do contain directives, but they usually read like "Keep the device away from water". But even then obedience is not mandatory (most of my cameras will get wet in the rain sooner or later and i never got arrested for that).
That doesn't mean commercial use is forbidden. It means that they aren't promising that the camera will take professional quality photos. So you can't come back on them for that IF that is found to be the case.
Similar claims are made for washing machines, typewriters, all kinds of "household' appliances. "Normal use" meaning for household use is way less stressful on an item than "commercial use". IF one buys a household appliance and uses it commercially, it renders the guarantee/warranty null and void, that's all.
Very slowly we will all lose all rights of ownership of anything we purchase and any hope for restitution or compensation for any harm done by items we purchase. With each successive generation of EULA, and electronic warrantee submission we "AGREE" to give up ownership rights and hold no one responsible for anything. With each form, document and disclaimer the wording grows longer and more convoluted, and one more precedent set against the rights of the consumer.
Before long we'll all actually be "borrowing" what we think we own.
Maybe I just read one too many 3D Freebie README files, and "intended for" is ambiguous. On adobe's site they are giving away the entire CS2 Suite & Serial Numbers, with the disclaimer that it's "intended for" people who bought it already since their activation servers died. It was determined in a thread here that such phrasing means we should not download and use it unless we already bought it.
It's ambiguous enough for me to make them clarify it, just for funzies :P
Makes me think of my favorite Bloom County comic...
http://www.gocomics.com/bloomcounty/1986/06/22/
ncamp
AMEN brother! :-)
BTW "amen" may be eventually copyrighted by the Catholic Church unless another religion beats them to the patent office. Hmmm I wonder if I can take out a patent on "God".... well maybe for at least six days of the week.
I'd say Judaism has a well-documented prior claim.
I'd say Judaism has a well-documented prior claim.
Tru dat! Anyhoot most of our western laws are inherited from the Romans and they always settled disputes with a good crucifixion or at least a gladiatorial combat, maybe a few lions thrown in for good measure. Hmmm maybe a should read Daz terms more carefully just in case some of those conflict resolutions are still applicable.
i bought a snap and shoot for my kids to play with and it had the same idiocy in the manual and i called the makers and asked about it
they told me that it was just there to keep them from getting sued
and sockratease the mellinium cow was produced and i took it the butcher and ate it
it was good with sauteed mushrooms and onions
...love it.
...hmmm. Looks like it's gettin' a might bit cloudy out.
...oh, and FWIW, the new MM page that just went up has cows on it. Could it be "Cow2" might not be far behind.?
HA!
Caught your miss steak.
It would have to be sauteed with MOOshrooms!
Nice try.
HA!
Caught your miss steak.
It would have to be sauteed with MOOshrooms!
Nice try.
Did someone say Mooshrooms?
Just and idea... and one question... was it a SLR camera?
Apart from the legal paranoia (about taking pictures of people on the street and selling it etc.) there may be a simple technical reason regarding warranty.
SLR cameras only have a limited number of shots before the mechanism starts to get weak. The professional models are designed to survive a much longer time, but not necessarily the cheaper models designed for the amateur market. So, if you return a damaged camera after 6 weeks and they read out the internal flash memory, finding out that you did 12.000 shutter releases within 6 weeks, they often refuse warranty, because they say that this huge number is "professional usuage" and therefore violates the common sense rules of "ordinary usage", as explained in the manual.
SLR probably means Silly, Laughable, Ridiculous.
But they are not limiting their claims on the usability of the camera - it specifically states that The IMAGES taken with the camera are restricted. And they do mention that taking certain pictures can violate copyright laws - but they are addressing all images from the device.
I think they are out of their tiny little minds...
It has been pointed out already that "intended for" is something entirely different than "restricted to", and this sentence in the manual is hardly more than "this hover is intended for domestic hovering". This doesn't mean that you go to prison if you hover the home of your neighbor and take some money, but it means that if you are a professional cleaning company and use this hover 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, 12 months in a row without a holiday - and then the poor machine gets "kaputt" - the manufacturer will refuse all responsibility because they regard this as "misuse". This is common practice - buy any cheap coffee machine, bycicle, water pump for the garden,... you will always find some hidden mention somewhere in the manual that it is "intended" or "supposed" for "domestic", "amateur" or "personal" use.
Of course they could (or should) rather write: "This is a cheap camera and you know it. You can take some 3000 shots, maybe 5000 if you are lucky, and then it waves bye-bye and you need to buy a new one". They should do that, but I guess the marketing department may have second thoughts. They think long and hard about it, and suddenly someone shouts: "Hey! I've got a great idea! Why don't we just say, that the images of the camera are intended for personal use!? That virtually means the same but sounds a lot better!" :-)
My objection is to the ambiguity.
Legal Crap should be confusing, but not that ambiguous.
Again, I refer to the adobe example - they use the phrase "intended for" to strictly limit use of a product.
The same phrase, in casual conversations, can mean different things - but in a legal document it should be clear (even if somewhat shrouded in "Legal-ese" lingo).
How the hell could they prove it came from your camera anyway ? and even if they could you'd burn the camera and their case goes up in flames LOL. Nobodies that stupid surely and I wouldn't buy anything from people who were !!!
But...
It's da principle uv da thing!
And cameras these days probably could be traced through data embedded in images. EXIF Strippers don't always get EVERYTHING.
I agree to the fact that legal stuff should be precise (although I'm from Europe where any blah in the manual that is not explicitly known to the buyer *before* the purchase is legally void anyway - even the example above with the "domestic" use is judged by the courts rather by "common sense" and "known practice" than any mention in the manual).
As far as Adobe is concerned - that is a weak example, because it was a complete and total F***U** by their side. They never intended (<- no pun... intended) any of what turned out (and that is official, at least it got reported by Adobe to some of the technical magazines in my country).</p>
They only "wanted" to give the software to old users, because they were in an emergency situation (CS is a pro software, and when activation failed they needed to provide a quick fix in order to avoid getting sued for damage). Then it went out of hand when the link became public and they realized that they didn't protect it. Then they took off the link in panic. Then they brought it back in panic and even made it *completely* public by removing the Adobe ID. Then they stated (in panic) that they wouldn't restrict usage by non-buyers. Then the legal department stated (in panic) that it is *not* available to non-buyers.
That whole thing was just poor, amateurish and - well - panic. You can't compare this to anything that a company prints in the manual.
However, the word "intention" is not suitable for any legal restriction. A hammer is intended to drive nails, a screwdriver is intended to screw screws... and if you use a screwdriver to drive a huge nail into the wall, no court will sue you. Just because something is "intended" for anything doesn't mean that you won't be allowed to use it otherwise. It just means that you may be responsible for any consequences, and not necessarily the manufacturer for the tool that was actually "intended" for something else.
Maybe this was glossed over, but it's a large part of my motivation here:"
Funzies are Very Important!!
Having said all this, there was some talk about charging people for their own photos some years ago. It started when Nikon released a pro-camera with a crypto-chip. The background of it actually got an entirely different aim - the ability to take digital pictures that can be used as evidence in court. You can modify JPGs an way you want, and you can modify RAW any way you want - including the entire CF/SD card. In analogue days, there were experts who could investigate if a negative film got manipulated or copied, but how can a RAW file be evidence? The solution was a crypto-chip inside the camera body that protected the RAW data by secure checksums that made it impossible to modify the bayer-matrix values without "disconnecting" the RAW from the individual camera.
When this first came out, the camera industry became wet dreams about a new concept: To sell cameras "cheap" but to protect the "high resolution" version of each picture by the crypto chip. In other words, you could only use the lowres preview thumbnails for your internet toys, but if you want real prints you need to pay for each physical copy. The industry dreamed that, it was probably pretty wet for a short time, and then it got buried.
However, if any company would want to do anything like this nowadays, they wouldn't use a weak wording and hide it in the manual. They would make it a business and get a patent for it, and you would need to open an "account" before you were even allowed to take the first test picture...
It just wouldn't be viable to make technology like this, if they changed you for taking you own photo and even if they all did it. It would only take one guy to manufacture a camera that didn't have those restriction and all the other guys would be out of business over night. So I don't think you need to worry :)