• Home
• About/Contact
• Economic Reports
• Research
• Advertising

• Business
• Economics
• Reports
• Finance
• Marketing
• Politics
• Real Estate
• Services
• Retail
• Tech

Subscribe

Blogosphere: Mixi’s new Terms of Use to allow it to sell crowdsourced content?

Mixi, Japan’s largest social networking site, has announced a new Terms of Use that is set to take effect on April 1 of this year, the effects of which could seemingly have serious implications for the website’s users.

Although the terms of use cannot be seen without logging in to Mixi’s site, the changes have been reported over at Slashdot’s Japan site. Blogger Fukumimi proves a good translation:

By agreeing to the ToU (which all users implicitly do by continuing to using the service):

1. Users grant Mixi a no-royalty, non-exclusive rights (of replication, broadcasting, public transmission, display, distribution, translation, alteration, etc) to any content uploaded onto Mixi servers.

2. Users agree not to assert their moral rights against Mixi. [Moral rights include the right of attribution, the right to have a work published anonymously or pseudonymously, and the right to the integrity of the work. source:Wikipedia]

When the new ToU comes into effect, the terms will apply retroactively to content uploaded before the changes to the ToU.

What does this all mean? Essentially, Mixi will be able to use any content on its site - potentially even private messages between users - for any purpose it sees fit, including profit-making ventures.

If Mixi’s plan is to monetize its crowdsourced content, trouble could easily be seen on the horizon. As Matt at AltJapan points out, more than a few famous people currently write on Mixi. Would the firm dare to incite a potential legal challenge by attempting to profit from their work?

More on that in a moment. But first, we need to remember what made Mixi so popular in the first place. As Japan’s internet users became fed up with the free-for-all style of 2channel and at the same time started to worry more about their online privacy, Mixi came along with perfect timing and filled that niche by providing an SNS that not only required an invitation from an existing user to join, but also afforded one the ability to decide which other users would have access to an individual’s content. As one Slashdot commenter wrote, “Isn’t this a service where one can keep a diary and not show it to people you don’t want to show it to?”

It was this context of greater awareness of internet privacy in which Mixi thrived. As the company has grown, and subsequently gone public (with a stunning IPO in September of 2006), focus has shifted to cellular phone access, advertising revenue, and potential expansion of the model into China.

Nonetheless, Mixi’s share price continues to decline. It’s pre-IPO price was set 1.55 million yen, and the issue surged to 3.15 million yen on its first day of trading. Today, it closed at 984,000 yen, about 36.5% lower than it’s IPO price and a whopping 69.7% lower than it’s all-time trading high of 3.25 million yen, which was hit on September 19, 2006.

All social networking sites have a limited lifetime. To survive, they need to grow, change, find new markets and new products to sell in those markets. Just like any other business. Despite that, it seems to make no sense for Mixi to make an attempt at monetizing the content generated by its users. We have no idea yet if this is actually what the firm has in mind, but Matt at AltJapan proposes an interesting scenario:

[There are] rumors that Mixi has pulled the plug on the blog of Kazuyoshi Miura, whose recent re-arrest in Saipan on murder charges has been front page news in Japan for the last several weeks. Could Mixi be planning to market his content in some form? There’s absolutely no way to know, but the new terms of use definitely permit it, and so speculation along those lines is rampant on the site.

One has to wonder if Mr Miura would have to log in to his account after April 1 for the new Terms of Use to apply to his writings. Hair-splitting aside, the idea of Mixi marketing the content (including images) posted on its site violates the very reasons why the company grew. It is a clear violation of the expectations of the users who signed up for Mixi, invited their friends to Mixi, and expected that what they wanted to be private would remain private. If nothing else, it certainly puts that fear into users.

It will be interesting to see how Mixi reacts to user complaints over this issue, should they grow into a loud enough chorus. We will certainly be watching for any developments here, and for anyone planning on rolling out a new SNS in Japan, the market timing is starting to look more favorable.

We can only hope that this new Terms of Use was the brainchild of a confused member of the legal team. I’ve had people in legal teams tell me before that it is illegal in Japan to ask a user to enter an email address on a contact form. We can only hope that this is some sort of misunderstanding (or that Mixi will try to play it off as one), and does not reflect some attempt by Mixi to profit off the fingers of its users.

Comments

Copyright © 2006-2009 Japan Economy News

Privacy Policy | Disclaimer