Ummmm. It damn well should NOT be your property. It's like people who sell their WoW characters. Sure you put in the work to level the character, but did you model that character? Rig it with animations? Code the world? Model the gear? Script the AI? ETC? No? Then it is not yours to sell! Same with LBP. You did not create the tools or assets, so it is not your property. 

Great article! I think most companies use wording like the above because they generally own the right to the software the user creates content on. They don't want people thinking the users have any rights of ownership over anything involving their software.

Well... who here read the Terms Of Service on Giant Bomb? Because I sure as fuck didn't...

Honestly don't care. 
 
If anyone expected to make millions off creating levels in little big planet they are clearly mistaken. User generated content tools are there only to enhance your experience with the game, not as a tool for creation like photoshop or Illustrator. 
 
Even Student Licenses for Photoshop and Illustrator don't give you license to sell the content you create with them. Expecting a videogame to give you such is foolish. 
 
This group is a joke and they just focus on the "problems" with popular devices to get attention. 

great article. Its a shame such user generated content is not really owned by the user. happens with far too much stuff. 

Well, if Nintendo wants to listen to my collection of classic rock, why not!

Good stuff Patrick. But, yeah, it's no doubt something they have to put in to cover their asses.  
Could you imagine one guy suing Nintendo because he saw a generic looking Mii in a first party Nintendo game that looks EXACTLY like his generic looking Mii? 
I can see that happening much sooner then Nintendo making Wario Ware games out of user's pictures.

Guys, this kind of thing has been happening for ages now. Youtube has owned the rights to your shit since it's inception. It's their right to enforce a contract that YOU sign; so if you have a problem with it then you don't buy or use the device. Boohoo, I can't sue Media Molecule for the rights to my LBP space invaders clone! If they were doing anything that violated your civil rights then you bet your ass there'd be lawsuits up the ass, but they're just protecting their investments. They spent the money creating the product; they want to maximize the profit on that product. 
 
Now, if fruity loops started confiscating the rights to songs made using the software, that'd be pretty fucked up.

It's definitely a tough thing to think about. On one hand, I can see why these companies would have clauses like these in their Terms of Service; it gives them easy access to promote cool things users make with their tools, but it's also a lot of power that's ripe for exploitation.
 
What frustrates me more is EULAs. EULAs frequently like to claim that you are only licensing software, not owning it outright. And a lot of proprietors of these scary EULAs are the same guys writing these Terms of Service agreements, proving that these corporations are willing to abuse power given to them.
 
And that's generally what happens, isn't it? These companies take whatever extreme measures to ensure the highest profit margins, even it means treating the consumer like a door mat. There have been too many examples of this happening. Any sufficiently large company always cares about money more than they do the rights of a few consumers that manage to get trampled in the fray. Period.
 
If there's legislation in the UK to prevent this kind of exploitation, why can't we adopt it? Shouldn't the fact that it was already apparently exploited in the UK prove that it could happen again here? I think that's all the reasoning I need.

I agree.

Hah! I never even thought of Whiskey's own ToS. Good point, guys.

It really doesn't bother me. Every company does it. Just look at this quote taken from the Whiskey Media Terms & Conditions:

When you post or transmit content on or through the site, you grant Whiskey Media and our affiliates and partners a nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, sub licensable, royalty-free license to use, store, display, publish, transmit, transfer, distribute, reproduce, rearrange, edit, modify, aggregate, create derivative works of and publicly perform the content that you submit to the site for any purpose, in any form, medium, or technology now known or later developed. You also grant us a license to use your name, city and state in connection with our use of any content you provide to us. You also consent to the display of advertising within or adjacent to any of your content.

That is remarkably similar to Nintendo's statement. The legalese is almost identical, and the "You also grant us a license to use your name, city and state..." clause makes it sound even more sinister.

This being the World Wide Web and all, I would be interested in the situation in Europe. Don't be so US-focussed ...

I don't think there's any problem with these restrictions on user-generated content in games.
 
The real problem is with DRM.  When we purchase something and only have a license to use that product.  I'd much prefer something that says I actually own it, and can use it as I please, as long as it's not for public display, like the FBI warnings at the beginning of DVDs.
 
Why should anything change for the digital download market? Keep the legal terms like it has been for years on Cd's and DVD, VHS and Vinyl.

Whiskey Media, stop this horrible abuse! I want my city back!

Im going to keep clicking "agree".

The fact is, Nintendo and all the other companies mentioned have creative license to the platforms/software that players use (after all it was the hard work of people in those companies who created it in the first place). Obviously there are also laws that protect people's creative work from being hijacked by said companies because, for instance, that person used a DS to produce it. Yes the company can claim a certain amount of credit for the hardware/software the person used, but it does not give the company the moral rights to the player's creation itself. Companies like Nintendo are just making sure their own side of the creation is protected from misuse. So when you accept their agreement, you are simply agreeing to let Nintendo take credit for their own IP and use the publicity you get from your creation to show how amazing their product is.
 
I think DbD is going a little too far with this. Sure their motive is admirable, but they are not seeing the forest for the trees.

I sold my soul to Microsoft a long time ago so the joke's on you Nintendo!

The idea behind these clauses is that the companies can then have marketing material with your product in it along the with user's handle. It's also to prevent the situation where some users might go and claim, I made this, so I should get money for it, and file a claim for it. Games have non-commercial licenses associated with them.
 
If an issue of personal information or devious behavior ever came up, regardless of what the clause says, any company would catch a ton of heat for it, could even be sued, despite legal contracts. Just look at the fiasco with Sony.

The lesson here is: Pick your battles.

This isn't all that surprising.  Of course making shit in their games using their tools and publishing it on their servers will have some legal agreement beforehand explaining that they own all the rights.  It's to be expected that they could do that.  How do you think Zombies became a gametype in Halo?  Or Grifball?  The point is, they're not going to ask for your permission to advertise something you made when it's in their game in the first place. 

Don’t Facebook have a licence to people’s photos that they upload to? That is a much popular service than any of the game consoles.

Oh no... Nintendo has the rights to the dumb photos I've taken of my cat.  What diabolical, sinister things are they going to do now?! 

How does ToS' hold up in court? There's no verbal or physical contract to refer to.

i HATE the idea that anyone owns anything when it comes to creative content, the fact of the matter is, if someone did claim ownership over it, what is stopping anyone else creating exactly the same thing in there own game? its knit picky western commercial bullshit laws, 
 
its like saying Gibson own the guitar riff to sweet child of mine, and whilst i appreciate GnR (or more likely sony or whoever their record label is) do own the commercial rights to the song, there is absolutely NOTHING stopping me sitting here and playing it on my guitar. except, you know... ability

Great article :)

How does ToS' hold up in court? There's no verbal or physical contract to refer to.

....I'd like Nintendo to try to find a use for my ugly mug and the crap I don't bother creating in games like DIY and LBP...

Hey, Patrick? Whatever credit you get for these long, in-depth tangents into the corners of the gaming world isn't enough. I fucking love this stuff, man.

I'm sick of the man. 

The man needs to be taken down once and for all.

One of these days some developer is going to get ballsy and let people attach a Creative Commons to UGC.
Oh, wait...

I'm not bothered by stuff like this at all. Great article, though. 
 
Oh, and South Park is great.

As long as they don't own my usernames, I'm fine. Also, since this is a ToS agreement, I can terminate it by just not using their service anymore, I'd imagine.

The lesson here is: Pick your battles.

So they can make games that use our Mii names and photos? 
 
Neat. 

This is trying to prevent someone suing Nintendo for making something someone may also have made using UGC tools. That's the way I've seen these things in the past.

Interesting read though I'm glad I often point the camera at myself, so Nintendo can't have my soul when it's stolen by a camera and/or future girlfriend.

This is the question of holding power versus using it. Nintendo(/other companies) holds the power but won't use it unless they feel they need to. We rely on groups such as defective by design to read and interpret these texts because we won't ourselves. Otherwise we'll keep clicking agree because we paid for our devices.

Great read Patrick.  

This actually reminded me of a case a few years ago where the photo of a girl was uploaded by the photographer to Flickr, an ad agency saw it, and put it in a Virgin Mobile billboard campaign in Australia which used her image in a rather mocking way. This isn't the same as game ToS agreements, but perhaps a bit worse since the girl herself didn't agree to anything except having her photo taken. However Flickr data is public domain, so just by uploading photos you give up rights to them. It's disturbing to think of having no legal control over how your image is used, and having others possibly make a profit from it.

cool little feature post.

So why do the US agree to this again?

Hate to agree with Mark Zuckerberg, but few people these days care about privacy.  Gets in the way of Internet stardom, probably.

I just don't like Nintendo everything they do.. ughhhh 

some of these legal contract  things do seem a little absurd, but i dont think that they are a reason to freak out about them this much

Interesting article, Patrick.
 
Just wondering if these words I'm typing now belong to me or to Whiskey Media, though...

As someone who grew up with Nintendo and had a NES as soon as they became available in the US, I feel that Defective by Design are not only being completely ridiculous but ungrateful as well. Nintendo has NEVER misused my personal information or tried to use anything I have created using their products without my consent (to my knowledge which really that is all that matters because if they put my mii or something else I made on a billboard I would know and quit frankly they never would, this is definitely CYA terminology). As far as I am concerned, I don't even want to think about what the state of the video game industry would be like without Nintendo so for any of these Defective by Design assholes to suggest that Nintendo is "awful" is just hyperbole especially if any of them are gamers. I am not absolving Nintendo of any wrong doing in their history I am just simply saying that they are not "awful" and they were the true pioneers that championed great games we all love/loved. Atari gets my respect but the NES made Atari look like a complete joke.