25 August 2009
Reader’s Digest’s impending bankruptcy and me
Posted by kckong under: Children; Copyrights; Photo business.
What has Reader’s Digest’s impending bankruptcy got to do with a photographer in this neck of the woods (or tropical rainforest)??
Well, nothing really. Except that I was contacted by someone from nowpublic.com asking if I’d allow them the use of this photo of my son reading an old copy of the Reader’s Digest in their “article”.
The message came to my attention thru my flickr account where they had identified my photo. I was asked to go to a page on nowpublic.com to sign up as a member so that I can agree to let them use my photo.
Now, most people who do photography as a hobby would jump at the chance of getting “published”. “Gee, look … I’m famous … I’ve got one of my photos published!” and they’d boast about it no end.
Me? Oh no, not me. Not a big deal to me. Unless it’s a major magazine … and even then it’d be nice to be paid LOL (dream on boy!)
I’ll be credited, they promise. Well, I guess they didn’t read the post-script to this blog posting. I don’t work for name and fame :)
Just to confirm my suspicions about their MO, I had a look at their Terms of Service … the legalese I’d be agreeing to if I became a member. Here’s what I found objectionable:
| By submitting Your Content to NowPublic, You automatically grant, and You represent and warrant that You have the right to grant, to NowPublic and its licensees an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sublicensable and worldwide licence to reproduce, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, publish, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part), distribute, prepare derivative works (including collections) of, incorporate into other works and otherwise use and exploit Your Content in connection with the Site and NowPublic’s (and its successors’ and affiliates’) business, including, without limitation, for promoting, advertising and redistributing part or all of the Site and derivative works thereof in any media formats and through any media channels, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. |
Then it goes on to say:
| You may remove Your Content from the Site at any time. If You choose to remove Your Content, the above licences granted by You in Your Content will automatically expire within a commercially reasonable time after You remove or delete Your Content from the Services; however, |
What the heck is a commercially reasonable time? And how does this jive with the irrevocable, perpetual license I grant them when the image is submitted? Hell, I even give them the right to mutilate and muck up my photo and transplant bits and pieces of it into some other Frankenstein image LOL
Nope, this is definitely not for me. Grant them a irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sublicensable and worldwide licence? Hahaha! Like prolific and award-winning writer Harlan Ellison said so bluntly in this youtube video, are these citizen/volunteer journalism websites someone with an eyepatch and a tin cup out on the streets?
No thanks … I’ll pass on the opportunity for publicity 
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