My Newspaper Wants My Thoughts But... They Want Them As If THEY Wrote Them
Sometimes you just have to push back against those who don't get it. The publishing business is in general decline. Self-publishing is rising and society is moving away from following the publisher and toward following the individual writer. Some publishers still have terms of service that are 19th Century style and onerous - give up all your rights and those of your first-born too, etc.
I don't give in to this kind of thing and you probably should not either. The musicians and other performers are pushing back and it's time the general public did too.
I sent in a piece to the Province newspaper and got the following as a reply:
Thank you for sending us a letter to the editor.
We would like to take this opportunity to invite you to join The Province's E-Street.
OPINIONS WANTED.
E-Street members provide us with comments on a variety of topics. Members are asked for their opinions on everything from politics to entertainment, sports to current events.
On a regular basis, members are sent a single question. Responses are not mandatory-if you're not interested in the question, there's no need to respond.
Selected responses are published, along with your picture, in The Province and online at www.theprovince.com.
For more information or to join E-Street, visit www.theprovince.com/estreet
It's your turn to speak up. We want to hear your voice.
-The Province
CONTACT:estreet@theprovince.com
Great! they want my opinion and have put together a system to get me topics. I already subscribe to one such writers' topic list, why not another... then I read the terms of service attached to the signup form. Nope - they want too much in the way of rights to what I write.
The following was sent to the Province Newspaper and Ros Guggi, Deputy Editor, in reply...
I recently submitted an opinion to your paper - you chose not to print it and that's fine. In return you've suggested that I join your
In going through the mandatory registration process I actually linked to and read your "termsofservice.html"
http://www2.canada.com/aboutus/termsofservice.html document, including the mentioned Schedules B and C "below," which in C, the section dealing
with submitted text, states:
"(a) by posting, e-mailing, transmitting, uploading or otherwise submitting any Submitter Content to any canada.com Sites or Services, you hereby irrevocably grant and assign to canada.com the unlimited right and licence, for the full term of copyright or any extension thereof, to copy, adapt, transmit, communicate, public display and perform, distribute and create compilations and derivative works from such Submitter Content, and to publish, reproduce and otherwise use and exploit the Submitter Content in any manner and in any and all media, whether now known or hereafter devised, throughout the world, without further compensation. canada.com shall be entitled to edit the Submitter Content, and you hereby waive in favour of canada.com and its assigns, all "moral rights" in and to the Submitter Content. Nothing herein shall obligate canada.com to use or publish the Submitter Content in any manner. The rights granted hereunder may be freely assigned or sub-licensed by canada.com to any third party."
(emphasis is mine and since I sent the original in text form, did not show up in the email version - richard)
You want me to waive my my "moral rights" in favour of you? Sorry, this is the 21st Century and nobody but me gets them. I have no problem assigning a license to you "in perpetuity" for your use - but I will not sign away all my rights to what I create to you or anyone. If you want to use my writings you will attribute them to me, now and forever, and you will check with me on any edits you do. I also reserve the right to publish my writings, even those I submit to you, anywhere else I wish - a grey area not covered by your TOS but one that I'm adamant about.
I may not currently write "for a living" but I do sometimes earn a bit here and there and I fully intend to continue to do so with
any/everything I write, including things I might submit to your or other publications.
It is certainly within your rights to set the barrier as high as you want for those silly enough to express their opinion via your publications - but as with any other "scam" I come across I'll be writing about this too. Publishers need to be dragged (kicking and
screaming it seems) into the electronic age, the age of online reputation of individuals every bit as much as publications.
I run a number of web sites and all, without fail, provide that "the opinions and writings of the submitters are theirs..." a policy that
many/most sites now adhere to.
You might come over and read some of my writings - published under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 2.5 Canada license. This means you can use anything I write as long as you attribute it to me. You can even edit it and re-purpose it, as long as any such work is also covered under the same license. http://digital-rag.com/
Richard C. Pitt
ps. the article you rejected is there too.
The above was sent today - I'll post any follow up I receive.
My objection to their wanting my "moral rights" stems from the fact that I've actually read the copyright act and looked up the concept. Roughly, it means they can re-purpose my works, edit them, and don't have to attribute them to me. It is as if they wrote them, not me.
added later: It appears that in Canada I might "waive" my moral rights but can't assign them (as this TOS requires me to do) - doesn't matter, I don't want to waive them either.
The original article is "Refuse Terror"
Tag: copyright moral rights
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