Official announcements and happiness!
Our Terms of Service Agreement and Privacy Policy have changed
As part of getting ready for public launch, we hired lawyers to have a look at our Terms and Privacy Policy. We’ve tried to keep the spirit of the original documents, but there are some material changes, so you should spend a few minutes and read them.
- Our new Terms of Service Agreement
- Our new Privacy Policy
In addition, we’ve made a few changes to our Community Policy. Our Community Policy is part of our Terms of Service Agreement, and it tells you the do’s and don’ts of our platform. You should totally read that too!
We’ve worked really hard to make sure all these documents do a good job of protecting Imzy, and more importantly, that they protect you the user. We think they’re fair and we hope you do too.




I had hoped that fanfic and fanart would have made it into the rules somewhere explicitly...
I have to agree, I haven't had a chance to poke through the update thoroughly yet but that would be nice
So, a lot of this change was lawyer stuff, making things better in a legal sense. We did update the Terms to specify "video or other visual imagery" with regard to porn, which we did with the intent of being more fandom friendly. I know it doesn't cover everything perfectly, but it's what we have for now.
Please keep in mind (as we've said) that a lot of stuff isn't intended to be super strict, there is a good amount of space for artistic expression.
Curious because my legalese sucks:
Does this mean if I draw a picture of a cat, and people like it, you could take that picture of a cat and then make it into an Imzy t-shirt or mug and sell it on the Imzy store that doesn't exist yet and make money off my content? I don't think you would do that, I'm asking if it means you could do that, because I can see the flaw in this.
Also, will there be a point in time where we can set individual posts at different privacy settings? Especially on personal communities? I would like to be able to say, share a picture of my kids in Halloween costumes, but I don't necessarily want that to be available to the wider Imzy community, just maybe a few close Imzy friends. Short of making a mini invite-only private personal community, which seems like a PITA, there's no way to do that currently.
The next paragraph does help clarify. It says this doesn't grant Imzy the right to just make normal derivative works but rather display and distribute through all the different ways they might use to do that.
I saw that, but it still doesn't quite answer my question. Because while I understand it allows them to do all of those things, it doesn't prevent them from doing the rest.
Broadly yes, I think that if they went mad and decided to make cat mugs with your kitty's pic that you posted here, then they probably could do that. Would they? Probably not, but they could if they really needed to.
Lawyers keep things really vague so that the company is protected no matter what they do. You'll find the same clauses in Facebook, reddit, Instagram, Twitter and pretty much any other site you might post your own material to.
It mostly is about allowing them to host things and have imzy display on any device or in any format, but it ends up giving them wider rights and that's part side effect, part them insuring themselves against future ideas.
So long as we are posting to social websites for free, then we have to accept these kinds of terms. The only way to avoid this is to not post anything on the internet - but what kind of a world would that be :-)
Custom privacy per post is the biggest feature I miss from Livejournal - no other site has managed this in the same way they did sigh
Per post privacy settings is something we're looking at. It won't be like livejournal exactly, but it should help.
Yay ^_^
You rock!
Dreamwidth has it. But I understand a lot of LJ users are resistant to using DW.
DW is just a copy of LJ's code :) I have a DW account but never found the type of community and friends I'd enjoyed on LJ, and then Twitter/Tumblr became my main places though also not so much with the community stuff, but I'm definitely starting to find that on Imzy!
For me, there are legal considerations: if I already have mechanical rights registered and represented elsewhere, providing access to registered works that can be altered and redistributed without consultation would be in conflict of the agreement I made. So it means I hesitate to share.
My legalese isn't excellent, either, but I'm pretty sure they could not sell shirts with your cat design. (Although if it was a cute one, you should consider doing it!)
An earlier part of ToS explicitly states that "you agree that by using the Site and/or the Services you consent to the collection, use, and sharing of Your Content for purposes of operating and improving the Services". Imho, "operate the services" does NOT mean "raise funds to run it" because that would have to refer to operating "the Site", not services, to be air-tight (imagine them not having funds to run the Site but being able to run the App, for example).
Also, (actual lawyers, correct me if I've misunderstood),
1) "a fully paid, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide nonexclusive" = "we don't have to pay you now, or ever, to do this, you can't suddenly decide that we should pay you to show your content, or that we should pay you to do that in your home country, and we retain this right to not-pay as long as you use our site; also, you're free to post it on other sites"
2) "to use, host, store, cache, reproduce, perform, display, distribute, adapt, modify, publish, re-format, and create derivative works of that Content in any manner" = "we can back-up our site and the posted content, summarise your content, display only selected parts of it, reproduce it in the smartphone app version of the site, have it show up in other users' Saved lists, etc."
3) "and fully sublicensable right and license (including moral rights)" = "we can allow our users to do the same (e.g. repost, view, etc.) without having to worry about you suing our ass (also, you can post content on the site anonymously and still own the rights to it)".
Homework?! Homework sucks. 💋
haha, sorry Pickles!
Shameless plug: /homeworkhelp
LOL
Also, because I think it sounded like I was complaining, I'm not. You all rock. I just like to nitpick so that nothing can be complained about later when things go live. You are all wonderful! <3 <3 <3
It's okay to nitpick! I'm glad folks are reading these policies, because they legit are important.
There's a weird HTML bug where the mini profile of a community when viewing a post on iPad safari on iOS 10 disappears when a user scrolls down and the browser toolbar hides. Hope you can have it fixed, @greenie
I'll have this looked into.
Thanks!
You're welcome!
I appreciate your effort to keep things in understandable English. For me, if the community policy on civility is maintained, this place will take off! If it doesn't, it will die. The world is an angry place right now because many have lost the art of respectful disagreement.
The thing with civility is that sometimes folks interpret that as meaning "no one should ever disagree with me, get angry, or call me a jerk."
While we do want people to be civil (it's a great ideal, who doesn't want people to be civil?) it doesn't mean that folks won't get passionate at times.
Especially when it's something near to their heart, emotions can run hot sometimes. Like, if someone questions my right to exist as a human being, I might get a bit fussy, yeah? And I honestly might disagree in a way that could be seen as not the most respectful.
Which is okay! But there's a difference between that and just having a platform that defaults to screaming at each other at every opportunity rather than attempting civility and respectful discussion.
Agreed. Some of the best discussions involve disagreement because they help everyone see viewpoints they might not have considered. How tings are worded makes all the difference. Sometimes it's as simple as the difference between "I think you're wrong" and "You're wrong!" I try to give people the respect of listening to and considering their viewpoint, and I ask them to do the same. Respectfulness can be the difference between "I don't see how you can hold that idea" and "You're a *** idiot!"
Yes this!
On a sidenote, so many people in my Facebook neighbourhood appear to have forgotten that freedom of speech does not mean freedom of responsibility. Yes, you have the right to think about things in a certain way and to express your opinion - BUT if you are being a racist/sexist/general jerk when you do that, there may be repercussions! They can even range from people being pissed at you and telling you you're wrong to being charged with a hate crime!
Le shock, le horror, etc. Sometimes I despair of people.
If it's taking me a bit to put together a community before publishing, due to RL suddenly taking a toll, will you ping me before you consider my comm squatted?
We will always contact people before taking any kind of action.
Awesome.
Thanks. I have a community that I intended to turn into a private space to complement a more public community, but there doesn't seem to be much demand for it... so I'm just kind of hanging onto it awkwardly right now. >.>
Congrats on public launch!!!!!!!!
I'm not allowed to post MY OWN information? Anywhere? Ever?
Please don't post your address, phone number, etc, publicly.
Great idea, but it literally says that posting my real name or my email address is a privacy violation. I don't like that at all.
I don't understand why it's a violation or why I shouldn't be able to if I want.
+1 Also, some people have profiles with their real name, it's an option in the profile dropdowns, and email addresses are usually the preferred way of taking conversations TO in private. Other people's should be off limits, but mine shouldn't be for me.
It's standard in boilerplate policies. We'll review the real name section, as obviously, we allow real name user accounts so that's conflicting.
However, it's really easy to post personal information as one's own but in a way that causes harm to someone else. For example, I could say it's my phone number and address but it's really greenie's and then claim to some awful thing that then causes a mob of people to call greenie, send scary packages, show up at her door, or have her swatted.
This really is for user safety but we will need to look at the real name aspect of that.
Thanks for pointing that out!
But that's not actually posting your own info then. That's still posting someone else's.
But by claiming it is your own, it will have a much longer life on the site. It would need to be found and reported by the victim.
No problem! I actually don't have my real name on the site and probably never will, but I'd like the option to remain. The email address is a thing I'd need to be able to occasionally post, even if I've only done it once so far and I tend to send people to redirected emails or sock emails.
Yeah, I see the reasoning behind it. It's to eliminate avenues for this kind of attack entirely. I wish I could say that no one would fall for that kind of shit, especially well-meaning people... but, well, I've seen more than enough knee-jerk reactions from people on the Internet - especially well-meaning people - to have eroded my faith significantly.
That being said, it's not perfect, and I have a feeling that it wouldn't stop someone who was determined enough to set up such an elaborate ploy in the first place. In the meantime, it's a burden on communities like exchange communities, penpals, etc.
I don't see it as viable without a PM option.
Essentially. I feel like a PM option (and permitting people to post their legal names and digital contact info) would be the best compromise that would also let them leave this rule, or some form of it, in place. The number of people who would want to post their information publicly on the Internet is small at best, but I can see a lot of people wanting to share such information over private, secure channels.
nods I haven't done it yet on imzy (and I guess I won't, now), but on occasion it's the best/only option really ... :(
Wait, our names? But there is a real name function! Many of us post content under our own names. What will happen to those user profiles?
We're going to review that and have it reflect the site properly.
Good to hear! Having my real name on some communities is one of the things I love about Imzy.
Thank you for update
Not to sound nitpicky, but could you possibly number your ToS content, like you've done with the Privacy Policy? Be a whole lot easier to refer to "section 4.6.3" in a discussion than "section 3 under the such-and-such bit in the thereabouts bit". ;D Er, just something to consider.
One thing I'd like to see is a little bit more clarity around protecting young or vulnerable people.
What will you do if a user self identifies as under 13? What will you do if someone under 18 self reports that they're being sexually, physically, or emotionally abused?
One thing that would be really good is for Imzy to have a single webpage for "law enforcement" to say what they need to provide to get Imzy to release info, and what info Imzy has.
Scare quotes for "law enforcement" because in some countries other agencies have statutory powers to investigate. For example, in England the NSPCC have some powers to investigate online abuse.
If someone identifies themselves as being under 13, we will remove them from the site. This is both because of COPPA and also because we're just fundamentally not set up as a site for kids.
Regarding other law enforcement concerns, we do have fairly extensive internal policies about that, and I'll take a look at our public policies, thanks.