[pbhjpbhj]

>their ToS is malformed otherwise you wouldn't have to trust them //

License terms have a certain purpose behind them just like the law and just like the law unless you specify ever possible scenario then you have apply generic terms. The level of depth varies but a license that considered all possibilities - and so wasn't 'malformed' would be very difficult to work with.

So a company needs a certain level of freedom so they can disclaim copyright infringement in circumstances such as showing adverts alongside your work. But that level of freedom means they could by the letter of the agreed terms use your images for advertising, but the company have told you that's not the purpose of the clause and that they don't intend to do that.

So you're fine as long as the company continues to act ethically. There's possibly an implied license, worth the paper it's written on, etc., etc.. Should they really go in to specifying what "alongside" means and the relative proportion of advertising text on a page and whether advertising overlaps; whether an interstitial (lightbox) based ad would be allowed if it showed some of your image through the semi-opaque background; whether adverts for the site that say had a glimpse of one of your images in the background were allowed; suppose there's a trade show and you happen to be friends with a speaker and your image shows in their timeline ... is that within the letter of the terms. And so-on and so-forth.

This is why trust is important to save wrapping up our entire lives in legalese.

If a company respects it's clients as people, then even if there is a loophole in the ToS whereby they can screw those people up they won't.

[potatolicious]

> "So a company needs a certain level of freedom so they can disclaim copyright infringement in circumstances such as showing adverts alongside your work. But that level of freedom means they could by the letter of the agreed terms use your images for advertising, but the company have told you that's not the purpose of the clause and that they don't intend to do that."

The beauty of legalese is that we can have our cake and eat it too.

In fact this is precisely what many image hosts do - they enumerate the allowable uses for your copyrighted material, instead of imposing a blanket, kitchen-sink allowance.

If you want to profit off of advertising while displaying my photo? Put it in the document, that's fine. Just don't go around asking me to essentially sign all of my copyright over to you.