Posts by collis

Hey guys,

Just wanted to jump in on the use-in-stock comments that a few people have raised. As I mentioned in the post, our next phase will look at separate licenses for advanced uses like stock usage.

One of the goals of the licensing project has been to untangle the licenses before we start adding more into them. That’s what this phase is all about – taking the knots out, so we can start weaving.

The problem with our old Extended License, and it’s a problem that I introduced, was it did a few different things (paid end use, web services, use in stock, repurposing). And those different things were big on different marketplaces and needed different price points. The result is that our old Ext License just could not keep everyone happy. Similarly the Regular License was trying to cover the growing Tools categories, and not doing a very good job there.

This simplification means that the Extended License pretty much now only does one thing. That one thing – paid end use – makes up the vast majority of sales for that license type. So it was the logical one to keep. And we can now make sure that pricing is suited to that particular usage. We also should probably look at the naming of the license so its a bit more descriptive!

The next step is to look at other types of uses that authors want to sell (and in the case of TF authors – buy) and then address those. We did get to one of these in this phase which is the Tools license which has now been split off into its own complete license.

So for a while at least the use-in-stock has gone, and from the sounds of this discussion so far this is going to mean a lot more informal arrangements with CC authors. I know this was already on the agenda for the licensing team, but we will definitely make sure its top-of-mind for the next phase.

As I mentioned in the post, licensing is surprisingly complicated, and part of that was our old ext licenses. I think this is a big step in the right long term direction for the licenses!

Hey all

Just popping back on here as promised. And @doru, sorry to disappoint but I’m going to stick to the issues in the OP!!

What does Envato do about copyright?

We’ve made a bunch of Notes posts earlier this year on what we do and why we do it. We’ve also got some knowledgebase articles to help authors out on how to respect IP, and what happens if they don’t. And we’d like to do more communicating on this in the future – I’d like us to revisit all the information we posted earlier this year and also add to it to deal with things like use of trademarks and other curly issues. To summarise, our reviewers act on obvious copyright issues that they come across when reviewing. And we’ll act on DMCA notices and take a look at other complaints as they come in. Occasionally we might also take a look at a category or two to do a health check on how our authors are doing in understanding copyright issues (like we did earlier this year for GraphicRiver print template categories, and site templates on ThemeForest). But as we can’t be copyright police, we can’t investigate every last asset in every item as it comes in. This not appropriate under the DMCA rules, and also the review queues would stretch into eternity if we did!

I think the main concern here seems to be that we’re either taking too long or not responding when you raise an issue. We do have a huge volume of support requests at the moment, which is slowing down our turn around time, but on the other hand we do prioritise anything that comes into support that’s to do with copyright and intellectual property. What we need you to do is to put a support ticket in with your issue rather than emailing reviewers directly – reviewers are supposed to focus on their reviewing of items as they’re uploaded to keep that process moving. When we get a support ticket with an IP request, we are able to either act on it within our support team, or funnel it to the right person (like a senior reviewer) and track it much better.

The process is much more quick if the copyright owner lodges a DMCA, because that is a clear process to follow and doesn’t actually involve Envato making our own assessment of copyright issues. If the complaint comes in from someone else though, you’d appreciate that unless there’s a 100% clear rip of an item, this takes more time to assess, and also that we have to tread carefully to try to be fair on everyone. Copyright breach is not always so clear as script having been ripped. There are often lots of grey areas where it’s not obvious whether something has been copied, particular when it comes to things like designs of items, or the ‘ideas’ represented in an item. We’ve come to realise that there’s a reason these sorts of things go to court sometimes! @Ale55andro you’ve said it well as there’s a difference between a straight rip and when ideas are used but the next product is created from scratch. So this takes a bit of time to assess, but we try to do it within several days if possible.

What doesn’t Envato do? Why not?

@SportTipsWorld, we’ve decided to use a separate esupport system (kayako) to keep track of a bunch of different item, author and buyer support issues. If we just rely on an item being ‘reported’ with ‘one click’, it wouldn’t give us the same ability to get the background information, and queued and prioritise the issues and escalate it to the right people. We need our esupport system to manage this process. So I ask for your patience in needing to go to our support site to report an issue!

A few of you have asked what happens to the revenue from items taken down. Although it feels like a solution to take money from one author and give it to another, we just don’t feel like this is an appropriate role for us to take. Firstly, things like this are best done by a formal proceeding. We can’t be judge and jury on these matters and start allocating money around – this is best left to the legal system. What we can do is disable repeat offenders – if you think someone is in this category please lodge a ticket giving us some information.

Our reviewers do what they can to spot copyright issues based on their knowledge of a marketplace or item type, but we do deal with well over 2 million items, and there are lots of other sites out there. So it’s not our job to check each item and its components against other sites. (Keep in mind that what seems obvious to you – as an author who’s highly specialised in something and potentially spending a lot of time on other sites – might not be so obvious to someone else.) We’d think it’s a better focus to educate all authors on how to do the right thing, and keep up our procedures to deal with DMCA notices if authors don’t do the right thing.

It would be great if you could take a look at our content policy and other articles and let me know what else you’d like to see from us to make more clear what authors should be doing to respect copyright.

Hopefully that helps answer everything raised guys! Sorry about the super long post

Hey guys! Glad to hear the talk was somewhat audible. The conference didn’t do a recording, so I just hit record on my laptop. Unfortunately I have a tendency to pace around on the stage and make wild hand motions, so that’s why the sound goes in and out.

wptitans said
Hey m8, you are correct about Collis. I also have the greatest respect for such a successful entrepeneur. But you have to be honest that we do want an update from time to time here on the forums for the folks who can’t attend at such meetings.

See, the things hey told you about the future of the marketplaces is something hey should share with all of us, this way we all know what’s hapening behind the scenes.

Like stated before, i don’t want to offend anybody and I do have the greatest respect for Colis, Envato and all others who are involved. They made it all happen. Just want some updates about what’s cooking.

It’s true, I really should be here more often. It’s getting tougher and tougher though I must say. These days I seem to spend most of my days in meetings and racing through email backlogs.

I’m hoping over the new year break to have a little time to think how I can try to change up my work schedule to have more time for things like popping on to the forums (and resting )

Hi guys, thanks to Carmen for getting me over here

I just wanted to post and say that I appreciate what xstortionist wrote asking about our general copyright roadmap. I’m currently reviewing and familiarising myself with how we handle these issues and where they go so I can post in a good amount of depth.

Hey guys,

Totally understand the concerns, and because its not really time to talk about our long term plans, all I can say that might help is its actually a very small test, and not intended to be here very long (though might see other types of tests). So far we’ve processed about 3 or 4 jobs and a dozen or so other types of requests.

VF: I completely understand, PhotoDune really sucked up a huge amount of resources, but was different in the sense that it was an actual marketplace product with that team on there. Still I take your point!

Anyhow I’ll be back shortly to let you know when the test has been pulled back down, and if/when we put something else.

And of course hopefully before too long I can talk about the long term plan

Hey guys,

Thanks for the feedback, and a couple of important issues raised – is this taking away marketplace resources, and isn’t this something for the sellers to handle and at a price they see fit.

In respect to the first question: marketplace resources, it’s actually a separate team working on this project, the marketplaces have been steadily getting more and more resourced and are still hiring aggressively. This team is a very small team exploring some R&D ideas.

With the second, I’ll be back in a while to talk more about this side of things. At the moment it’s just a small test for a product idea rather than a finished or final product. Sorry I can’t say more at the moment, but there will be more details as we go.

I mostly wanted to get something on the forums in case anyone saw that cross link to a seemingly random looking site and couldn’t make heads or tails of why were linking to them

Thanks guys!

Hi Folks,

If you buy a logo template today, you will see a small link off to a service called Graphiclancer to get your logo template customised.

Graphiclancer is actually a test project from us here at Envato. We are testing out some product ideas through a lo-fi site to see what sort of buyer demand there is in small service jobs. This will be the first of a variety of small tests you may come across. It isn’t a fully formed product yet and so we’re not ready to share it with everyone.

We’ve kept the Graphiclancer service unconnected to Envato because we want as unbiased feedback as possible.

I’m going to be talking more about this project later this year, and the results, and what we have in store for authors.

Hey guys! So yesterday I was picking files for the upcoming Print Designer Bundle (I always ask the team if I can pick the ones that have GR in them and spent about four hours browsing through the library finding files.

And I just wanted to stop in and say HOLY COW ! The quality of content here just keeps escalating. I spent so much time saying “wow!” Designers these days are so lucky to have all this stuff at their fingertips.

Anyhow I just wanted to pop in and say ‘awesome work everybody!!’

Can I say … I agree!!!

It’s pretty embarassing to be running Mobiletuts+ and iPhone.AppStorm, not to mention Webdesigntuts+, ThemeForest, Nettuts+, etc, and not be responsive!

We moved RockablePress and Creattica to new responsive designs earlier this year, and Tuts+ is due next. The Marketplaces is one that we haven’t properly looked at because there are so many other priorities here plus mobile buying of items is a smaller use case. But a mobile strategy for the marketplaces should definitely be on the cards. We’ll have to get rid of those darn .flv footage preview files (argh!)

rofl!

I wish I could actually dance like that! This is how I normally do it though