I'm new to submitting to various screenwriting contests and competitions, and I wanted to submit to the BloodList. One of the sections of their ToS is making me nervous, though, and I wanted to ask the advice of people who are more familiar with these sorts of things. It reads as follows:
"Furthermore, I hereby grant you a worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable, sublicensable, royalty-free license to reproduce, use, made derivative works of, and display (“Use”) the Material, or any part thereof, on the Bloodlist Website, including for marketing purposes, and of all copyright, trademark, trade secret, patent, or other proprietary rights in and to such Material for such Use, provided that it shall be in your sole discretion whether or not to actually use or display the Material on the Website."
Now, I'm not a lawyer, but I've read a lot of contracts in my years of novel-writing and game-writing. And that passage really sounds to me like it basically gives them permission to whatever the hell they want with the submitted script. :-/
Am I just being paranoid here?
On there website. Yes you are correct.
2 people like this
it's standard boilerplate jargon.
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Seems standard. They can not do “whatever the hell they want.” This is solely about giving license for the site’s purposes. It’s referring to showing or listing or naming your work on their website and/or for their marketing/advertising. If you have questions then you should ask them or a lawyer. No need for paranoia nor ridiculous lawsuits.
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I would be very wary of the Bloodlist. The real "Bloodlist" that gets distributed are the top horror scripts that industry execs vote on privately. If you're unknown and paying some kind of fee to be considered on that site, it's a waste of money. The woman who runs it is now a manager with a big company but I've known several writers who have had problems with her. Very unprofessional despite her reputation because so many horror writers want to work with her. Consider yourself warned.
Kay, that was one of the clauses that set off alarm bells for me, too.
I get that they're almost certainly just covering their own asses in terms of putting the material up on the web site, but I feel like--and I've had numerous people who are knowledgeable in the area of entertainment contracts confirm for me--they could have found a far cleaner way to accomplish the same thing, without leaving loopholes.
I remember when a popular custom t-shirt company added that "derivative" clause - and wound up losing half their graphic artist online shop owners - who rightly or wrongly feared that it meant their designs could be "re-purposed". Nothing that clear communication on the part of the company, and artists copyrighting their own material, couldn't have solved. But instead it turned into a lose-lose because of the perceived breech of trust. Clear and honest communication is so important.