iGame Radio

Yesterday, OnLive, the streaming gaming service, launched. Or rather, they opened their doors a little and allowed a few people to enter a little bit at a time. Not apparently ready for a full-scale launch, OnLive has presented the Founding Members offer, which will allow select members who join between now and July 15th access to a free account for a year. Those who register for the Founding Members offer actually get put on a waiting list with hopes of getting chosen in their area.

However, upon reviewing the OnLive Terms of Service, one finds some disturbing requirements. Under Section 9, which defines UGC (or User Generated Content), the Terms of Service specify that anytime that you post any kind of content you generate, whether it be images, videos, comments, tags, etc, you grant OnLive a non-exclusive license to use that content as they see fit. The full text says:

Any time you post a message or communication on an OnLive sponsored forum, or create, post, upload, submit, share or distribute any content through the use of the Service, including the OnLive User Community Forums, or play a game on the Service, including any user name, tag, handle, motto, avatar video or still, and including contributions via text chat, text messaging, forums, message boards, whether within or outside a game (any such message, communication, content or play, collectively, “User Generated Content” or “UGC”), you grant OnLive a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, unrestricted, royalty-free, fully paid-up license (with the right to sublicense) to use, reproduce, distribute, display, perform, transmit, modify, edit, create derivative works from, and otherwise exploit such UGC, in any form, format, or medium now known or later developed.

This implies that OnLive recognizes that you are the owner of the content and granting them a license to use it. Further on in that same section, however, it says:

“You hereby waive all “moral rights” with respect to all UGC and all copyrights therein to the extent such moral rights can be waived under the existing law of any jurisdiction, and all uses thereof, and consent to any action of OnLive that would violate such moral rights in the absence of such waiver or consent.”

“Moral rights” in this context refer to your rights of content ownership. Basically, OnLive is stating that anything you generate and post on their site they now own. Sound familiar? Facebook has a similar claim to your content once you post it on your Facebook page.

Does this mean that when you post a comment in one of their forums, then want to post a copy of it to somewhere else, that you have to ask permission? Or if you post a Brag Clip on your Facebook page or website that you have violated their ToS?

Finally, OnLive states that they own automatically all of your statistics, whether they be scores, rankings, log in/log out times, length of gameplay, and the like. Though they do specify that they can grant permission to post this information in leaderboards and the like, does this mean you can’t brag about your scores on your twitter feed?

Strangely enough, when examining the Community Guidelines for OnLive, you get a very different perspective. In Section 7, “Control over content and access“, OnLive attempts to refute any ownership of user generated content on the forums.

“OnLive does not control or endorse such content [User Generated Content] and OnLive has no obligation to monitor the message boards or the content posted to the Service by participants. OnLive accepts no responsibility for such content.”

It seems that User Generated Content is controlled by different entities at different times, depending on what OnLive intends to do with the content. Monitor the forums? We’ll let the users take the control there. Use the content to promote our site? Nope, that’s our content now.

I have contacted OnLive for comment, but have not received a reply as of this posting. I will update if I do.