The Standardized Terms of Use Initiative (STOUI) is a grassroots movement to clean up TOU's in the digital scrapbooking industry, so they are easier to read/understand and serve to protect all parties involved.


The STOUI came about because there was a lot of grumbling over the confusion and lack of direction in many TOU documents. So the DSD-Pro team of professionals invested some time in studying the matter further. Their quest was to find out if this was as big an issue as it appeared to be on the surface and if so, then learn exactly what it was people wanted to see changed.

The research results indicated that concerns were not limited to only a few people. There were a lot of scrappers who shared the same concerns and honestly, the problems were rather small and fairly easy to come up with do-able solutions - primarily because every group discussing this had the exact same idea for fixes.

The heaviest discussions wrapped around the need for "cleaner" TOU's.

Exact problems were identified. Solutions were developed. Study discussions were held. Changes made to better meet the digital scrapbooking industry needs.

So now it's time for action!

Go to the STOUI web site at http://dsd-professionals.com/stoui/ read up on the initiative, download the icons, and grab additional tools to help make your TOU's secure and easy to read. Then pick up a STOUI support tag and support the STOUI further by writing about the program in your community forums and blogs.

Let's get some momentum going towards standardizing and improving the TOU part of our careers!