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| Volume 1, Number 17 | February 18, 1998 | home / experts / internet |
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Watch Out for the Microsoft Cartoon Censor |
  
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Bill Gates Will Determine What Your Animations Can and Cannot Say
Knowing that it’s expensive to create animated characters, and wanting to make it easy for Web developers to experiment with their animation technology, Microsoft offers a handful of "agents" or pre-built animated characters that one can program to move, gesture, and speak. You can use the characters to learn how the Microsoft Agent technology works, or you could incorporate one of the characters into a Web site for your enterprise. But, as an alert reader of license terms noted recently on the CNI Copyright mailing list, Microsoft doesn’t want you training their characters to say anything that might derogate their products or violate certain other standards set by Microsoft. Here are Microsoft’s license terms for the Agent: You may create scripts or programs that use the Microsoft Agent API to animate the character and static or animated images that are provided by Microsoft to enable the end-user selection of an animated image, provided, however, that you do not: (a) use the Character Animation Data and Image Files to disparage Microsoft, its products or services or for promotional goods or for products which, in Microsoft's reasonable judgment, may diminish or otherwise damage Microsoft's goodwill in the SOFTWARE PRODUCT, including but not limited to uses which could be deemed under applicable law to be obscene or pornographic, uses which are excessively violent, unlawful, or which purpose is to encourage unlawful activities.... Most of us barely glance at the piles of verbiage thrown at us by the software giants. As users, we can probably get away with this. But as a site developer one might think twice before incorporating Microsoft’s characters, or their Agent technology itself, given these restrictions. What do you think? Would you invest in a freely-available character knowing that Microsoft retains in its license the right to review and reject your uses of the technology? Conceivably one could invest a great deal of effort in building content around an animated character, only to learn later that you’ve run afoul of their definition of their license terms. |
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Created: February 18, 1998
Revised: February 18, 1998
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