Dear Concerned Citizens of Blogsterville,
First, on behalf of the owner and the entire Blogster Development Team, we have a very high appreciation for the concern you've expressed with the new Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
We accept the responsibility for not having gone over it closely and bringing it to your attention before posting the update.
We're sorry and we've learned much from that mistake.
We as developers have been in communication with the owner and the lawyers and we're working hard to bring in a balance between having the right "legal language" and making sure that it's something that all of us, not just the lawyers, can understand.
Here are the updates that have been made to the Terms of Service:
Old: You should assume that everything that you read or see on the Site is copyrighted or otherwise protected and owned by BLOGSTER.COM or some third party who licensed to BLOGSTER.COM the right to use such material. Unless otherwise expressly noted, nothing that you read or see on the Site may be copied or used except as provided in these Terms and Conditions of Use or with the prior written approval of BLOGSTER.COM.
New: You should assume that everything that you read or see on the Site is copyrighted or otherwise protected by the user posting the content and thus licensed to BLOGSTER.COM with the restrictions described in the paragraph below, or is owned by BLOGSTER.COM or some third party who licensed to BLOGSTER.COM the right to use such material. Unless otherwise expressly noted, nothing that you read or see on the Site may be copied or used except as provided in these Terms and Conditions of Use or with the prior written approval of BLOGSTER.COM.
In addition, we've added the following paragraph to make things even more clear under the heading of "Submitted Information":
New: BLOGSTER.COM does not claim ownership of any content that you place on your Blog. You retain the rights to any copyrighted material posted on a particular Blog. You hereby warrant that you own all rights to any and all materials that you place on your Blog, or that you have all necessary rights and permissions to use the material in such manner. By submitting content to BLOGSTER.COM for inclusion on your Blog, you grant BLOGSTER.COM and its users (subject to the Limited License above) a world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish your content solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting your Blog on BLOGSTER.COM's Internet properties or otherwise enhancing BLOGSTER.COM's services.
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The intent of the owner is not to take your work and put together and sell compilations, etc, as a number of you have rightly expressed, but rather to protect your work and continue providing a service for you to share your work with others according to your wishes.
We want to make sure that our terms are as clear and as easy to understand as possible. We encourage you to read them carefully and please, continue to give us your questions and comments.
Have a wonderful evening,
Jonathan Wold
Blogster Development Team
34 comments on Terms of Service Update - Round Two
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Thanks for the clarification. Hopefully, our friends who have left may come back. I really miss them and the close community that we had before.
I'm not receiving my notifications--is there a problem?
That is a lot clearer now, thank you. I believe you understand how and why I and others were concerned when we read the policy before, but this helps to ease our concerns.
I am going to try to post with pictures after a fairly long refrain from doing so. I had just gotten so frustrated that I had given up. I have not attempted to upload any graphics since, but I am now ready to try again. I will let you know if I have any problems.
By the way, I love the "save draft" feature. That is awesome! Thanks!
I'm lawyer.. Please answer my question.. How to DELETE my blog ??? Please send the answer to my email mpjrds@yahoo.com Thanks.
I have recently changed my email address; and the blogster login offers me no opportunity to receive password confirmation at the new address -- the login only recognizes my old address. I have had to adopt a new blog site -- I would prefer (the old) one. Please advise -- Thanks.
Much clearer, and I see that my rights and ownership of my work and material is protected. Thank you!
I'm satisfied
Thanks team, and owners...
Gunnar/ Jonathan,
I am STILL unable to reply to comments on my posts.
I've informed you of this on two different occassions.
Why do I get no response on this BASIC funtionality issue?
Are you simply ignoring my request, or, did you NOT receive the private email I sent to the team regarding this issue? If the mail's been "lost", I'll be happy to send it again.
Or, would you prefer to have me post an article on your failure to address this Blog 101 elementary functionality issue?
Waiting for the NEXT luke-warm response...
Amerigobard,
What browser are you using to access the site? When you view comments on a blog post, do you see the "Reply" button at the bottom of each comment?
Thank you for letting us know.
Jonathan Wold
Blogster Development Team
If they are web comments, not user comments you cannt reply to them right now :)
I'm currently in the process of erasing the articles on my blog so does the new terms of service apply to me?
This is much better!! Thank you team!! I can get the pictures and videos on again. Now, I am going to ask when we will get our old emoticons back? Also, when will we get to choose the skin color of our blog's background again? Spring is coming and something more colorful and bright would be nice. Just wondering.
Thanks again!
Jenn
I'll check on those old emoticons. We have plans to develop a new original set as well, but, if possible, we'll start by bringing the old back.
The new themes will be coming soon! :) - We're going to develop a season-neutral theme for Blogster which will become the new default and then, in the near future, start giving you the option to select themes for your blog on an individual level.
Jonathan Wold
Blogster Development Team
moonraker and chihulahualover are the same person. so she is talking to herself here. since she outed my other name, i felt the obligation to let you all know
Once again the icon(s) to download and/or post pictures has disappeared--I had to go to greasy to do my latest post with pictures and then c & p it to here.
Dear Martin,
With the latest update, posting pictures shouldn't be giving you any trouble. When you click "Write Post", there should be a button on the right side of the screen that says "Click Here to Add Photos" - If that's missing, your browser may have Javascript disabled, which is required to run Blogster correctly.
If you're still having trouble with this, please let me know. I can put together instructions on how to ensure Javascript is enabled.
Jonathan Wold
Blogster Development Team
Jonathan, my bad!!! Picture download working fine--it was my goof!
No trouble at all Martin! :D - Glad to hear it's working.
Jonathan Wold
Blogster Development Team
l;Mahalo for filling us in
This is Mar.9, 2008. Nothing is showing up, being posted after being written, in the Politics and Legal catagory, since Mar. 5. What is wrong now Blogster management???? Great job on your new package ???!!!
Did you select the "Politics and Legal" Category when you wrote your new blog entries? If so, I'll do a quick check and make sure that your category selection has been saved.
Jonathan Wold
Blogster Development Team
By the way, did I mention the terms of service look great!?!? Go blogster! I am now happy I opened my mouth or rather tappped away here on the keys!
We've appreciated your input, Holly. You've been very reasonable to work with and we've really appreciated you bearing with us during the difficulties. Thanks for your support :).
Jonathan Wold
Blogster Development Team
I can now get my pictures, daughter showed me, different from what it used to be, its harded. Hazel
Thank you for trying
We're continuing to work on improvements. Now that it's functional, we'll keep working on making it even more easy to use.
Thanks for stopping by! :)
Jonathan Wold
Blogster Development Team
Nothing in any blog catagory, not just Politics and Legal, has been posted since March 5, 2008. What gives guys?????
How about updating the "Browse Religion" category?
Thanks
Good job guys! I knew you could "git er done" eventually. Now, if you would just get that darn "visitors" button fixed so we could see who's reading our stuff! ______<----you would get a "thumbs up" here but.....
Are the terms of service changed to reflect this because it still contains this:
If you submit any information to us, including any comments, remarks, suggestions, ideas, notes, drawings, graphics, concepts, recipes, or other information, you are giving BLOGSTER.COM and its users the right to use, copy, display, and distribute that information free of charge, and that information will be treated as non-confidential and non-proprietary and may be used by BLOGSTER.COM for any purpose, without your consent or any compensation to you or anyone else.
Dear Holly,
The paragraph just before that offers the statement of clarity in regards to ownership; namely that Blogster does not own the content of its members. The paragraph below (the one you pasted) is there to protect the rights of Blogster members to share each other's content (without any rights of ownership), such as copying it for reference in another post, etc.
If you or anyone else has further questions, I'd be happy to direct them to the lawyer for any extra clarification.
Jonathan Wold
Blogster Development Team
Thank you for clarification!