And, for anyone confused why there is a perceived dissonance in regards to intentions and actual wording, look up the term "Right of First Refusal". A quick google search should explain it well enough
Apply does not always equal affected. Those words do not mean the same thing.
FOR EXAMPLE, here is an excerpt from Instagram's ToS:
We reserve the right to refuse access to the Service to anyone for any reason at any time.
Does that apply to everybody? Yes. Does this automatically happen to everybody? No. That's the difference between "apply" and "affect" in this case.
Tapas' ToS applies to everybody. But not necessarily everybody - if anyone at all - was affected by it. And we won't know if anyone was affected by it unless someone actually steps forward and claims it. So far, no one has. Were you actually, directly affected by this, @NagashiKhan? Outside of a moral standpoint and a "what if" thought process?
Additionally, a lot of these clauses are necessary for legal reasons. Businesses have their own legal representatives for this very reason - so they don't absentmindedly do something that might be considered illegal. Omitting or lying by omission could be classified as one of those things, so online digital services like Facebook, Tapas, Instagram, etc. are legally obligated to mention these things even if they don't affect everybody 100% of the time.
Apologies if I'm still not understanding the question.
Okay, but maybe that's as clear as they can be with us right now. Considering Michael even said:
So we either have to wait for someone who's qualified to speak further on the matter, or just accept the fact that companies can't exactly be 100% transparent all the time. So far, the explanations given so far have been reasonable, even if it's not what you were looking for down to the very last detail. At the very least, have some patience.
Googling legal terms is the same as googling health issues - they don't apply the same way to every single condition. We don't know what kind of legal setup they have with Tapas. Don't assume cancer just because you googled "mole on my butt." It's probably just a mole on your butt 
If you're really concerned, go see an actual professional (in the case of the hypothetical hyperbole, wait for a qualified staff member to come here and tell us more and/or make an actual official announcement).
Again, sorry if the point of the question is just flying over my head. At this point, why should it matter who was "affected"? No one's stepped forward making such claims, and the clause is gone now, so any chances of anyone being affected are now gone.
Wow, the stuff going down while I'm sleeping! Thank you to everyone for looking at my questions, it feels good that they're being addressed, one way or the other. And @NagashiKhan is right, I was going for the nitty-gritty details, because we have so many different interpretations floating around but no official, clarifying word, and because if something like this does end up in court, looking at the details of what's written is exactly what the lawyers and judges will do.
Right now, I agree with both @NagashiKhan and @UzukiCheverie that there is little point in further discussing it until the person in charge of legal stuff at tapas makes a statement.
Hehe nope, I'm not! And yep, I'm all about the details. ;D
Thank you!
Honestly I'm worried about people still jumping ship due to the twitter storm and how in the long run thats going to affect the site --- the whole thing is quickly becoming more stressful as people perpetuate falsities on twitter and many take it for truth then jump ship taking this whole thing as battle cry for artists rights and being screwed over by the "cooperate man" ---I know I'm not a very popular or big creator on Tap but I love making my comics and this whole thing just worries me as others have gradually been getting meaner about the whole ordeal.
Artists in general are a salty people.
But I'd think the whole thing will blow over with time. Like I didn't even know Comic Panda lifted series without creator approval until a couple days ago.
If people think they can still retain and/or grow their audience outside of Tapas, then that's their business.
It's up to the people who stay with Tap to keep it as one of the better webcomic hosting platforms and make it better for everyone.
Going to try to look at the silver lining:
Staff mentioned somewhere in a recent post that they are looking at hiring a community manager. In order words a full time Forum, Tweeting, Facebook, podcasting staffer for creators to liaison with. That's a good thing that probably wouldn't have happened until a major "blow out" like this occurred.
They should hire this employee:
Ok, so a little corny but it's the first thing that came to mind and it gets the point across.
Tapas is like a toddler still, learning how to walk. It took a big step and went boom. That's just going to happen from time to time. The sad thing is that creators didn't even give the staff 24 hours to respond when the poo hit the fan. On the other hand, staff should have addressed this weeks ago when it was called into question, instead of waiting for the storm to form.
They also spread falsities and out of context trash about specific members.
They also group attacked any member that requested for people to give staff those 24 hours and trash talked them on other places. Not all of it is visible here of course since the mods have done and are doing what they can to prevent it, but I have heard from silent watchers of this drama that there's a lot of gossip going on behind people's backs.
I'm mostly avoiding this discussion right now for a certain reason, but I thought I would add this. Going back to lurking in the corner.
I'm deleting my post since it was flagged as spam :/ I didn't consider it as much since I was responding to a literal ad video, but if it's bothering people that's all that matters.
Only today three of the comics that I read have deleted their comics or have announced they are leaving. Please don't act as if this problem is solved.
Suggestion: give again more attention on the home-page to the free and unknown comics that made your site great.
Y'know...with all the creators (some of them big) who emotionally overreacted to this weekends shit storm completely jumping ship before they gave Tapas an opportunity to explain themselves, (or not because I guess stirring up your own shit storm on Twitter is better than having a logical discussion with other creators) it'll be their loss and our gain for those who've chosen to stay with Tapastic.
And no...that does not make us "dick suckers" according to SOME creators over on Twitter. (My god did this weekend show lots of creators true colors.)
Honestly yeah, especially since the whole Comic Panda thing was brought up by one of the Big Names in webcomics. Like it sucks that that had happened to them, but they brought it up for the sole purpose of fear-mongering without even bothering to check if the original staff of Comic Panda were even still around. Michael already confirmed that the staffers who were around at that time were no longer with tapas, so its not like tapas was trying to sweep troublesome history under the rug when the current staff had nothing to do with it
it sucks that people become openly hostile towards those who don't think tapas is out for our blood :/ but theyre the ones screwing themselves over because tapas is probably the only other active and big webcomic hosting site asides from webtoons.
Michael already confirmed that the staffers who were around at that time were no longer with tapas, so its not like tapas was trying to sweep troublesome history under the rug when the current staff had nothing to do with it
CEO of comicpanda (Chang Kim) is still here at tapas as CEO
http://www.cbr.com/comic-panda-offers-satisfying-chunks-of-webcomics-in-a-vertical-format/3
1
oh. well then, that's interesting??
At the risk of sounding like a defender, I don't think the CEO himself runs the website. Maybe he did have some hand in what had happened back then, but there were surely other people who were more involved in the fiasco itself. Again, it sucked what happened to the people who had their comics stolen and such, but iirc Michael (? maybe I'm wrong) said that the purpose of it was to show a beta of the website to potential investors. Again, on the other hand it was probably not the best way to have gone about it.
Well just because they're co-founders doesn't mean they curated the content of the beta version of Comic Panda.
As higher-ups usually do, they delegated the task to people under them. And these people fucked up.
EDIT: And I checked Michael's exact words. He said the "content team at the time wrongfully used actual comics without permission." So those were the staffers that did the wrong, and those were the staffers that aren't here anymore.
It would be nice if the CEO got in front of this with a "State of the Union" speech, but based on what others are saying about what's going on in private circles (we're not following the Twitter storm because we have more important things to do with our time) it's almost at the point there is nothing that Tapas can do to offer an olive branch and mend fences.
It's almost as if some creators want to attack Tapas and are looking for any reason to. Since the ToS is now fixed they're trying to find anything else to attack with, including bringing up Comic Panda and TokyoPop and whatever else fits their narrative.
Do creators want Tapas to fail? It certainly seems like it.
Tapas has a dedicated staffer who works hard at trying to grow the site day in and day out. We sent a bunch of personalized emails to a list of news curators that the staff member gave us, trying to get the word out about the tipping feature. None of those news curators even sent a "we're not interested" response. And now some of them are going double barreled shotgun on Tapas. What the heck?!
Only negative news sells these days? The tipping feature was created to try to help creators get ahead financially and no one seemed to care in the industry. Now Tapas makes a gaff and the barbarians are at the gates.
If Tapas fails, then what? LINE Webtoons? A website solely dependent upon the goodwill of a larger company that could one day decide to cut the umbilical cord? Then what? Sorry to say it but Webtoons is an Inkblazers time bomb. One day some day the books have to balance. Not saying its going to happen any time soon, but the math does not make sense.
So then what, Hiveworks? Which is gated... so most of us can forget about that avenue.
It's not like there are a ton of good options out there for creators who don't want the responsibility of running their own dedicated website. Tapas provides a large reader base, gives 85% of tips, 70% of ad revenue, provides a mobile reading experience, and takes care of the back end. Name something better.
Not saying that we liked what was in the ToS. Quite the opposite. But to err is human. For those who want to choose to believe that Tapas is trying to do good, their hearts were in the right place, they just didn't execute it properly.
But it seems like a lot of creators want to think the exact opposite, that Tapas is out to get them. We could understand someone being on the site for a long time, bringing in lots of new readers, but never getting featured as having some pent up resentment. But one of the creators who insta-nuked their series, they got major play by staff, including Staff Pick, a Spotlight, and possibly even a Daily Snack (think so but can't remember exactly). Their subs count went O.O in no time. What the heck? Staff fell all over this creator and then the creator doesn't even give staff 24 hours? Talk about a total lack of respect.
Tapas made a mistake. Creators make a mistake. Where's the mutual understanding?
We aren't thrilled 'bout the whole Tapastic to Tapas change and how the homepage went novel heavy, but the company has to make money. Not many seem to get that point. Tapas isn't here to serve at our pleasure. It has to be a mutually beneficial relationship. Tapas makes a mistake and out come the pitchforks? Geeze. "What have you done for me lately" to the extreme.
Yes, Tapas should have come forward and said, "in two weeks we are going to make changes to the ToS" and offer a public comment period rather than just pop this on everyone. But on the other hand, creators need to get a grip and act like professionals, not short fused arsonists.
In the end all this purposefully perpetuated drama does is poison the reader well and punishes all webcomics.
Absolutely! This whole fiasco has gotten me more wary about connecting with artists, especially after hearing about all the mudslinging on Twitter and attacks against specific creators.
Now I'm unlikely to trust any sort of artist unless I've interacted with/observed them for some time. I don't want to know anyone who sees something I do or say at face value/out of context, not ask me about it to get the facts, and go dragging my name through the dirt in a gossipy corner of internet high-school.
I really wanted to stay in the shadows on this 'icky' drama since I am a newbie and don't have that many readers. I think the people that jumped ship and left without warning their readers was pretty selfish. I know that we all like to say we make our comics for ourselves and it's fine to have that mind set, but think of the people that donate and get up everyday excited to read the next chapter or page of your comic and find out it's gone and not there to read anymore and no one knows why. Don't get me wrong I don't have nearly the amount of followers for my comic, but I am grateful for everyone that reads it. At the end of the day and as a creator, it is your choice if you want to leave or stay. Knowing that it would be hard for me to start from scratch off Tapas, I am staying and my mindset after this is if I can't trust to have my comic on the site for any reason I will inform my readers and upload else where. At the end of the day, Tapas made a mistake as we all do, apologized and fixed it. Everyone has the right to feel the way they do. As for me, am I upset and shaken over what they did without informing us? Yes. But, I'm staying on Tapas and continuing to enjoy making my comic and knowing other people enjoy it as well.
Agreed. Read some of the reader comments left behind and you can see that it was traumatic for some. Some readers mention how they did a lot of tipping and suddenly the comic they enjoyed has just pulled up stakes and took off. Doing that really leaves a sour taste in readers mouths. Who is to say they won't just give up on webcomics entirely?
This scorched earth policy ruins things for everyone. And to those creators who did this, it could very well follow their professional careers for the rest of their lives.
There are only five major publishers left. There aren't that many bridges you can burn. If a publisher starts researching a creator, sees the kind of Tweets and crap they pull, do you really think they are going to want to sign with that creator vs. one who is professional?