Update to Elements Author Agreement and Market Author Terms

Envato Announcements
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Dear CEO,

I appreciate your engagement with the authors’ community. However, the lack of choice in the upcoming changes is concerning. Many of us feel that the ability to opt-in or opt-out of this new initiative would have been a more respectful and fair approach.

It seems strange that a platform like Envato, which is so technologically advanced, wouldn’t implement something as simple as an opt-in/opt-out button for authors to exercise control over how their content is used. This lack of choice seems to undermine the very basis of our creative rights and control over our work.

I strongly urge you to consider giving authors more say in this matter. After all, the content that drives Envato is born out of our creative efforts.

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Hi @hichameassi and thanks for joining the discussion.

You have mentioned ethics. Envato told all authors that thay have 20 days to decide wheter they want to stay or find job somewhere else. Including authors who built Envato success in the last x or xx years, earning here together with Envato 6 or 7 digits. 20 days? This is not ethical.

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The class action lawsuit against Envato should have been filed 5 years ago, when they used their dominant position to steal the authors’ clients and lure them to their new Elements market. When the authors exclusively created their store on the Envato Market for many years, attracted new customers to their portfolio at the expense of their time and money, when the authors did not have the opportunity to quickly move to other markets, because they believed in exclusive agreements with Envato, but Envato management simply began aggressive advertising of their new market at the expense of all other authors. Even advertising in the shopping cart, when your customer had already put your product in it, Envato wanted to lure it with their ads (!!!). What is this if not a crime? My article from October 18, 2018 - Does Envato act against the authors of Envato markets?

And they still do it. For many authors, the Elements market is competitive because these authors do not publish anything there, but for Envato, their Elements market is a source of income. Also, with these actions, Envato violated their own rules. Any court or antitrust agency (especially in the US) would fine Envato for such actions by a very serious amount.

But no one filed a class action lawsuit. Envato realizes that he can do whatever he wants. Therefore, from such impunity, they provided new terms of the agreement, knowing that the authors would not do anything again. Although such agreements from a legal point of view are simply a mockery of the other party, because the new terms are so vague that Envato can use it the future for almost any purpose.

I’m not afraid of AI and I’m not against AI, I’m just talking about what Envato is doing at our expense. Want to make money on my portfolio - buy it from me not steal from me.

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If AI developers want to use a royalty-free product for commercial purposes, they need to buy a full license for each item.

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Hi Hichame,

The fact you actually haven’t been able to anticipate many of these issues and have answers ready to go for what should have been some very obvious issues that your authors would have presented to you says it all really. A complete lack of foresight from a company that should know better. Your engagement above uses a lot of words but doesn’t really say very much at all.

You pressed the ‘go’ button on this and figured you’ll deal with any fallout / backlash after everything is set in place.

It’s pretty obvious you did not consult authors despite Envato’s mission statement being “Empowering creators to thrive”. In what way is this change of terms ‘empowering’?

(It is of course Envato’s right to do what they want for their business, I’m just pointing out that it does not correspond to Envato’s values).

Setting June 1 as the effective date and then calling it ‘enough notice’ is absolutely laughable and shows a lack of understanding of the situation of many authors here. Not everyone is as fortunate as I am in being able to delete their entire portfolio from the website. But additionally, for those who do want to do it, there is no way to globally delete all items, has to be done individually, unless you eMail support. And support around here isn’t exactly the quickest. Now you are ‘going to take more time’ to answer the questions, leaving authors unsure about what to do - in limbo.

As many others have pointed out, the fact you have been unable - as a tech and supposedly forward-thinking company and website - to implement an opt-in/opt-out checkbox is an absolute abomination.

You have been unbelievably vague about how you will support authors. “Without having details of future arrangements, we cannot provide you with details of the fee payable to you, the Author.” But hey, we will still use your stuff because that’s what you agreed to in the T&C’s! Incredible, just unbelievable.

Lastly, you mention ‘explore the available opportunities’. If you are indeed ‘exploring’ then… why write ‘develop generative AI models that use your content’? Seems like the exploring has already been done. If that’s not the case then you have done a terrible job communicating it.

Envato isn’t what it was. I get that companies have to change, but you’ve completely lost it. One of the hardest things to do when growing is retain a personal touch, some companies manage it, some don’t. Categorically, Envato hasn’t, and it started many years ago while I was still a reviewer. Watching the company eat itself from the inside is honestly a fascinating case study at this point, but I wish you the best of luck, and can’t wait to see the responses that are no doubt being focus grouped and run through legal in order to write even more words that say very little of actual substance.

Edit: Feel free to look at the Quote Retweets and responses here to see sentiment outside of this forum as well.

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People, the only true form of revolution here would be for every author on the platform to immediately decide to remove all items for sale by Saturday May 20, 2023. At that point, Envato no longer has a business. Envato has not cared about authors success since the day “Elements” was born. Elements effectively stripped ownership of your assets away from you and now those assets will be used to obsolete you.

If there ever was a time to make a statement, it would be now and we’d all collectively have to be on board to implement a massive “DELETE ITEMS” party. Music Creators and really all creators should have found ways to unionize years ago. Well we are out of time, and now it is decision time.So if you like my idea click the “heart” button.

If we all did, well we’d win, because Envato would have no choice but to change their terms.

No one should agree to perpetual use of their intellectual property. If you do, you essentially are giving envato 50% of YOUR property to deal anyway they chose and pay you anything you want.

What was once yours, is no longer yours. The way I read this deal is Envato and their AI partners, now become the owner of your creations. Please tell me how I am wrong?

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89

:warning: Unpopular opinion.

The world is changing. And I like that Envato is not a conservative company, and always searches for ways and trends to push sales a little higher.

But…

All agreements, taxes, business models between authors and Envato should be simplified.

  1. I don’t care who is a “seller” on Envato Market.
  2. I don’t care about US and AU taxes.
  3. I don’t care about subscription models.
  4. I don’t care about AI.

Give me upload page, dashboard with my item stats and payout process, and clean out everything else. Simplification is much needed. Make it more like an investment fund. I “invest” my products in your company, you manage them to maximise my revenue. That is how it should be. Of course, periodic reporting on the company’s vector would be a good practice in this case.

Comparing my revenue with my effort and market outside Envato, I would be 100% able to make decision, how much time to spend creating items for Envato.

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I did not follow the previous engagements and changes, but if you feel exploited, then filing 5 years ago vs now just means: Do it now.

AI is the most exploitive thing to have been created yet. Not a single one of these models exists without exploiting in the highest form imaginable. Go after them now, because as you stated, they already go away with it before- and will keep doing it again.

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Very interesting, anything that adds up to help us have more sales is welcome! Also, we must be prepared for the changes that artificial intelligence is generating.

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Does this mean we will also be able to upload ai generated content, the way we can on Adobe?

Will any added income streams still pay us 50% of what is actually paid by the client?

Envato has a huge volume of sales, but compared to other places I am actually earning more compared to the size of the port. And the income is very steady, probably because of the very high volume. I know that the actual pay per download is very low, but I am interested in the actual total return per month.

Many of my friends don‘t upload here, but I find the results very convincing.

So I would like more information, but I trust the Envato team to have a good business sense and that they will make us more money.

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I spent a reasonable amount of time building a modest portfolio on Audiojungle and it was great, making a little money and building the platform…engaging with other creatives and making friends in the process. I appreciated being part of it. Then Elements came along and turned me into a second class Author…despite being a featured creator with featured track and trending items. This really annoyed me and at that point I stopped creating new content. This new move takes the biscuit though! It treats me and my fellow creatives with utter contempt and disrespect. Vague reassurances and corporate waffle. Third party sales with no financial control…training AI, Perpetual licensing and more…with a 20 day make your mind up period to suck it all up or get stuffed…after I put in 10 years! It stinks and is a rubbish way to treat me and fellow authors. Unless something changes very quickly I will be deleting some or all of my music from the site. What a shambles. I’d rather give use of my music away for free than have Envato bully me into this nonsense.

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100% agree.
Joined in 2010 and I can’t believe what has happened to the company that use to have great values and keep authors in mind.

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I have looked through that more than 230 Audiojungle authors, including elite ones, have already deleted their entire portfolio, this is just today.

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Hi @hichameassi

One of the changes you want to make is for us to grant rights to Envato to distribute our work globally and on a perpetual basis. Since you talk about ethics, I ask you the following:

  1. Is it ethical that envato can distribute our content globally, and exclusive authors cannot? Or Envato plan to eliminate the exclusivity agreement? From my point of view it would be an abuse that Envato can distribute my musical production wherever they want, and I have to pay 70% fees if I want to distribute in other markets.

  2. Will an exclusive type of license be created for learning artificial intelligence?

  3. please explain to us about the percentages of profit that we will receive when our music is used to teach artificial intelligence, or when it is licensed on one of these global platforms that Envato propose.

Thanks.

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Hi there!
This question really worries me, suppose that the AI ​​learned from my music track and created its own track based on it. Further, this AI track was bought by some client from another platform around the world and posted it as a personal product, with rights protection, (ID content) or other. What is the probability that my track, which was taken as the basis of AI, may be banned from my other clients who bought this real track on audiojunlge for example.
After all, now artists who see generated picture by MidJorney, for example, clearly find parts of their work, although they did not give any permission for AI training by their pictures, and most likely many of these artists will sue such companies. I would not want to get into such misunderstandings with copyright and prove my case. We look forward to hearing! Thank you!

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Of course your success is “intrinsically linked” with creators. You can’t create AI systems without them. We know this. And you also knew this backlash would happen because this is all exactly the same as other companies like Deviant Art, Art Station, Shutterstock and the like. Closer to Shutterstock where you promise a vague payment of some kind without any details. Before AI, it was very much understood and I would go as far as to say demanded- that payment terms are stated clearly with no vague details in the contract for anyone to agree to it. Surely most lawyers would always advise against signing a contract that does not spell out what actual percentage or royalties one gets from a deal. But in the new AI world, it’s supposedly okay for companies to shrug that off as undefined because of “exploring the available opportunities”. Meanwhile you demand that everyone agree to it or else- providing an incredibly short window of time to actually do this.

In no world were you taken aback by this response. You’ve already seen it play out elsewhere, you just made a calculated move to ruin all creator goodwill at the possibility of massive profits later. You can’t ask for “patience” when shoving this down everyone’s throat.

This response is so predictable, others already called it before you even posted. The only response that would be a surprise is cancelling the idea as a mistake and realizing you messed up, but that would require you to see creators as more than just dollar signs.

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Envato, you create Elements and then alienate authors who were not invited. You build links to Elements within the market using graphics that stand out making Elements more eye-catching and you aggressively promote Elements using intrusive techniques such as a banner that stubbornly cannot be dismissed. The forum is filled with complaints from authors who have seen their sales dwindle as you divide the community and now this.
The way that the Envato community has been served this change in the TOC’s is…well I won’t repeat what has been already been said. Waves Audio tried to change their business model and was met with an almighty backlash from their loyal customer base resulting in a reversal of plans. Not suggesting that Envato will reverse their decision as you will have already set in motion your collaboration with the 3rd parties involved with AI. Trust in Envato has gone and now whatever you reply with next week will not rectify the damage now done. Thanks Envato with your handling of this community…

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As I understand it, as soon as AI learns to make music like us (with our own help), we will be safely thrown into a landfill …

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AIl AI created works are all, by definition, derivative. They are based on the ingestion of any number of human-created inputs, be they music scores, songs, paintings, etc. An AI has not lived a conscious life from which creative inspiration is drawn. It can only analyze, mimic or resynthesize previously existing human works or data sets. Therefore when Envato ingests all music authors music assets to Train AI to create AI music works (to presumably compete against and obsolete human authors) , they are breaching copyright laws.

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Next week i wouldn’t be suprised to see some back tracking going on. Seen it before within my 12 years on Envato. Lots of upset to many authors with poor decisions and not consulting authors first.

My bet is we will see an opt in or out button!
Too late for me as i’ve deleted my portfolio but thats ok because i lost faith here about 5 yrs ago which is why i haven’t uploaded here since. This for me was the final straw!!!

Im guessing alot of authors are waiting for the big announcement before they decide what to do? Could be wrong though…nothing suprises me here anymore.

Ps…found that Waves thing quite hard to swollow!!! Took them a whole weekend to turn it around :wink: This isn’t the same though, we are not purchasing, just merely creating. The work is already done!

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