Webtoon's new user agreement is... uhh... super sketchy?

[ylldre]

(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)

[thepenmonster]

Pardon my French but Webtoon can kiss my ass.

[Mallory]

I was wondering if it was the standard social media disclaimer, but with comparisons to Tapas and the presence of Naver’s ML image generation aspirations, I think imma take down my account there. TBH I’ve already been heavily considering it due to their poor UI and never featuring page format comics. I guess this is just the final nudge? I’ll wait and see if there’s clarification before doing anything (but I also may just do it anyways because of those other reasons)

At least Tapas is firmly against all AI on their platform right now (not that it can’t change its stance in the future, but I imagine they are playing it super safe and waiting for regulations and lawsuits to be over before they even consider it).

ETA it is worth noting that the report about developing gen ML is from March of this year, however as of June 7, this appeared to be their stance:

Naver Webtoon is looking into setting up regulations on AI-generated art

So who knows.

[river121693]

https://twitter.com/zzsleeps/status/1673924126434631682
It seems like Tiktok and IG has the same language, so it probably is still boilerplate. I still feel uneasy because of how broad the licensing is, especially when looking at Tapas or even Youtube's ToS.

[MaxFF]

The Instagram one says the license is terminated when you delete your content, which does not seem to be the case for Webtoons. The Webtoons one is permanent and non revocable which makes it even sketchier in my eyes. Yes the Instagram one still makes me a little uneasy, but there is a mechanism to get out of it.

[river121693]

Yeah if all the TOS I’ve looked through webtoon feels the most sketchy. Even if it’s for promotional stuff, I’m still wondering if the terms means they can do whatever they want with our work
Why can’t they be as clear as senpai tapas :,0

[powerplantanimations]

Preparing to delete right now. Should I for Webtoons?

[powerplantanimations]

DAMN IT. I can't enter without agreeing. I guess the least I can do is NOT agree. It seems like my comic will be safe if I don't agree with the new terms and agreement.... because it keeps kicking me out.

[irresponsiblepics]

Some old school creators I know of only use webtoon and tapas to promote their comic (samples of a page) and link to their own Web page or store to buy physical copies.
Looking at this..now I know the reason behind it.

[river121693]

I would look into it more before deleting your comic (or just privateting it if thats possible) if it took a lot of work to post in the first place. Again, I'm not a lawyer. I'm just reading it myself and talking to other creators. There's just a lot of mixed messages right now.

[river121693]

this is from "a lawyer" (according to someone on the Webtoon Discord). It's basically how I interpret this whole thing.

[Headypigeon4180]

seeing as this thread exists I'll go delete the recent one I made out of a panic...

[abigaillmartin]

Would not updating the comic on Webtoon work? Webtoon doesn’t work for me anyway it’s very laggy and annoying to get in. Tapas is much smoother and easier to use. It’s why I hesitated to put my comic on Webtoon in the first place whaha.

[river121693]

Ok, another update which I think clarifies A LOT of things.

Someone on discord who works with copyrights stuff explains that Webtoon's licensing is only for the images you post on Webtoon, not your characters or story or anything. Meaning they can't just make your story into a movie. If they want to use your creations (Intellectual Properties) for, say a movie, it would require a separate agreement called IP licensing.

This theoretically still doesn't prevent them from taking your images for AI training.

What is the difference between licensing and assigning IP? - OpenLegal

[Kelheor]

Nothing theoretically prevents any AI (and there are hundreds of them right now) to take your art from the net for training though.

[river121693]

this is true. But I guess this would offer Webtoon protection should AI be legally considered theft (assuming that all of this would be for AI at all).

[MaxFF]

I'm not a lawyer but I'm skeptical of this explanation. If the comic tells a story then the story is in the images. The characters are in the images. Webtoons operated for years without this overly broad language that grants them unlimited rights to do anything at all with people's comics. Yes they will need to license some rights to cover their ass, but I can't believe they need it worded in such an overly broad way. We can compare the terms of various different sites and see the differences. TikTok is the only other one that seems comparable to Webtoons, but frankly I find that to be a shady platform as well. Every other site seems to spell out the clear limitations on what they can do with the license.

[conventurecomics]

I don't know what the future plans for canvas publishing seems WT wants a new direction.

[river121693]

yeah the wording is still terrible, confusing, and totally vague. Im still keeping my ears out as well. I don't think it's too much to ask for a company that makes 100 million USD a month to be clear and transparent on their ToS lol (though maybe the vagueness is the point for them). If Tapas can make things clear, there's no reason for Webtoon cant.

[simonitropunk]

So, let me get this straight... it does sound very confusing before deleting my comic.

So, with this new TOS, they won't use any of our characters, stories, creations and all and they won't have any liberties to tamper with the contents inside?

However, they can sell merchandise like selling t-shirts, etc... they can use your art without your consent? I'm totally confused and would love a bit of clarity.