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Comment by jnabholz | Hacker News Reader

Agreed, I imagine this will not go over well with 500px users. You would think 500px would respect the IP savvy of artists and avoid (perhaps) patronizing them.

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I don’t think it’s patronising at all. The site is acknowledging not only that their customers’ time is valuable, but also that most people won’t bother to read two sentences of plain English—let alone a couple dozen paragraphs of legalese. It may put 500px on slightly shakier legal ground, but as far as the users are concerned, it’s humanising and friendly.

I agree. It seems like 500px is trying to think outside the box to communicate the intentions behind their ToS so that the experience is more transparant. I would assume the thinking is that either almost nobody will read the ToS as is, but maybe some people will actually read the simplified version. The issue of course is that legalese is dense and a simplification is not adequate. As an alternative, I would like to see how people react to a simple statement BEFORE the ToS that explains the company's intentions as an introduction.

The intent of that clause would have been to allow them to a) actually show the images on the 500px site, b) highlight them in "popular images" on the site, c) surface them in API results.

Agreed. Plus the terms do state that all copyright remains with the user. Someone seems to have amended the basically text to reflect this:

  Your photos will preserve whatever copyright they had before
  uploading to this site. We will protect the copyright and
  will not sell your photos without your permission.

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