Ownership of content posted on WordPress.com

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  stefaniesomers · Member · Oct 10, 2012 at 4:50 pm

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  I can’t find this one anywhere.. My coach is quite upset with me that I selected WordPress.COM instead of WordPress.ORG… she tells me that anything I post on WordPress.com becomes property of WordPress, and that I do not own my content. I cannot find reference to this anywhere… Can you please either fill me in on this policy or direct me to where I can find out? If she is in fact correct, and my content, once uploaded to WordPress.com is no longer mine to control, I would like an immediate refund of all payments made. I’d appreciate an answer to this as soon as possible.
  Blog url: http://stefaniesomers.wordpress.com/

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  staff-blorbo · Staff · Oct 10, 2012 at 7:00 pm

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  You retain the rights to all content posted here.

  You do, of course, grant us some rights so that we can actually display and distribute your content throughout the various parts of the WordPress.com experience, like the Reader for example. Here’s the relevant portion of the Terms of Service regarding that:

  By submitting Content to Automattic for inclusion on your Website, you grant Automattic a world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish the Content solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting your blog. If you delete Content, Automattic will use reasonable efforts to remove it from the Website, but you acknowledge that caching or references to the Content may not be made immediately unavailable.

  For more, please see http://en.wordpress.com/tos/

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  stefaniesomers · Member · Oct 10, 2012 at 7:17 pm

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  First question that comes to mind upon a quick read here is, can you elaborate further on “modify” and “adapt”… does this refer to electronic modification for purposes of translation or platform migration, per se, or something more insidious, i.e., editing?

  More specifically, is there any instance in which any of my content would ever be displayed anywhere outside a WordPress site without (1) my knowledge (2) my consent and (3) credit to me.

  Also, is there any instance in which my content would be displayed WITHIN a WordPress site without being credited to me? I of course see where it could show up on WP without my knowing it – but fully credited and linked.

  Secondly, if the ownership of content is as benign as it sounds, why are so many smart people telling me there’s such a huge difference between WordPress.COM and WordPress.ORG insofar as content ownership goes?

  I have, this week, had the fourth consultant in a row tell me to stay away from WP.com, because “content ownership is transferred to WP upon publication”. I cannot find anything to substantiate this, yet I keep hearing it. This platform is much easier to learn, but I don’t want to slit my own throat later for ease of use now…

  Can you clear up for me why I keep hearing this same warning? If you can clear it up for me, and give me some good ammo, I’ll go to bat for you. If not, I’m outta here. All the smoke is making me look for a fire, and I don’t want to take the chance of being on the wrong side of something I can’t completely pin down. Don’t mean to be a PITA, but one warning is an opinion, two is coincidence… three is a pattern, and four is something you can’t ignore.

  Thanks in advance for the help!

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  staff-blorbo · Staff · Oct 10, 2012 at 8:52 pm

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  “Modify and adapt” in the sense that we’ll modify and adapt your content for display in the Reader and such.

  Basically, it just means that we need rights to handle your content in order to distribute it.

  More specifically, is there any instance in which any of my content would ever be displayed anywhere outside a WordPress site without (1) my knowledge (2) my consent and (3) credit to me.

  Never, or at least not by our hand.

  Also, is there any instance in which my content would be displayed WITHIN a WordPress site without being credited to me?

  The same as above. Our reblogging feature provides only an excerpt with full credit and a link back, but that doesn’t mean that someone else won’t just copy the entire post on their own.

  Secondly, if the ownership of content is as benign as it sounds, why are so many smart people telling me there’s such a huge difference between WordPress.COM and WordPress.ORG insofar as content ownership goes?

  Well, it depends on what you mean by “ownership.” I know, I hate the “what you mean by” card too, but it really does apply here.

  When you have your own installation, it’s just that. Every bit of data is under your control. You have full access to the database. In this sense, you “own” the data because you can do with it as you please whenever you please.

  Here at WordPress.com, we don’t want you to worry about the maintenance and such, so you don’t have access to the database. The content is yours, and you have to trust that we won’t do something unsavory with it, but I can assure you that we would never do that. You can’t directly access the database itself, but you can edit content whenever you want to and export everything at any time.

  Again, you own your content, but it is effectively under our direct control, and you have to grant us some rights to distribute it on your behalf.

  If I were to break it down into a more contemporary example, I’d say it’s the same as the difference between running and publishing your own newspaper (WordPress.org) or submitting your articles to the New York Times for publication (WordPress.com). If you went with the New York Times, you’d still own the article you wrote, but would need to grant them some rights to publish it on your behalf.