Where Do Writers Discuss Their Craft Here?
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OK – was sure the retain our rights was in there – doubt I would have moved – guess homework time –
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You grant a license to display – I see no transfer of intellectual property to WordPress.COM – WordPress.COM will remove your content from their servers, subject to caching issues.
Property rights survive termination of the TOS agreement, since you do not transfer your intellectual property rights at any time I can see, you keep your rights.
Having had to sign some ugly property rights agreements in my past life, they all had very explicit that they owned anything I thought of that was even remotely related to my work, no matter when or where I thought of it (yes sitting on the toilet at home, they still owned any thoughts relating to their business that I came up with at that time) – the use of the term “intellectual property” and “transferred to the company” were used quite freely – I don’t see any of that language here.
However – I am not a lawyer, did not get a lot of sleep last night, this is past my bedtime and I did not stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night either :)
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Reminds me of the poet’s union that once tried to sue schoolchildren for reciting the poetry of living poets. The work was still under copyright, you see.
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Not ToS but a support document:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/export/Export Your Content to Another Blog or Platform
It’s your content; you can do whatever you like with it. Go to Tools -> Export in your WordPress.com dashboard to download an XML file of your blog’s content. …
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@rain where money is involved…
@1tess-same same, but different, in my opinion. I think Mark’s reply (albeit from 2010) in that forum thread I linked to is the best answer, but somehow on the way to the ToS document, it crashed into legalese, as Mike so eloquently said above.
(Off-topic: Looking at that thread I wish tsp had chosen a new username when he became Staff. This could lead to a world of confusion, as if it isn’t confused enough already.)
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Yes, well, where money is involved. Odd things happen, not always fair. I mean, “happy birthday???” Where I worked before, we did run into issues with ASCAP. fair use vs profit
@justjennifer, yes your link is more appropriate, but then the article I linked to is easy to find and is right there in the Support articles.
(off-topic: I am looking for a username) ≥^!^≤
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This is a good discussion, but perhaps off-topic altogether because the OP has emptied the blog and apparently no longer using WordPress.com.
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I did see above that the OP was clearing out of Dodge – too bad
Looks to me that a bit of fine tuning in the TOS is in order, I did remember needing to read the TOS several times before feeling comfortable moving.
Thanks Jennifer for the links, you always do great research on past threads.
Tess – in a way still on topic as it does show what looks like some confusion in the TOS and this topic does come up from time to time about ownership of what a blogger writes. And as noted above the fine print can be confusing a bit and explaining that since you don’t give up rights you still have the rights (off into the fine print weeds again) is not the same as “you retain all intellectual property rights to your original work”
Since this has drifted a bit, I will flag this for staff attention and see what they think of a bit of fine tune of the TOS
thanks all
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As I said when I expressed my concerned that motivated me to delete my Word Press account, the language with which Word Press reserves to itself national and international (and quite thorough) rights to use parts of anything we post–without paying royalties to the writer–that apparently they are reserving to themself the right to us an amount of posted writers’ intellectual property such that without this wording they’d be liable. That tells me plenty. That’s why I deleted my account. Had it been clear in the TOS when I read it, I would never have opened my Word Press account. We’re exposed enough with our material being on the Internet, but if the server provider claims rights to our materials, we’re just begging to give it away. Feel like a Motown recording artist? lol
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WordPress.com does not claim to own our users’ content, and all rights to the content of blogs are retained by the original creators of said content. As Jen rightfully explained, we have the clause in our TOS so that we may promote and publicize blogs on WordPress.com via our Reader. Mark’s post from 2010 (https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/wordpresscom-copyright-issues?replies=18#post-462356) is still accurate.
@fingdelete, I am sorry you find our TOS too limited, but in reality, we believe very strongly in free speech as well as users maintaining all rights to their own content. I hope you reconsider blogging with us.
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If Word Press changes the wording of its TOS to make it absolutely crystal clear that Word Press makes no claim whatsoever to the right to use in part or whole anywhere at any time material posted by users, then I’d consider Word Press a safe plac to post my material. As the TOS was worded when I saw it just days ago, no, I wouldn’t post my meterial onto Word Press.
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I never interpreted WP as owning intellectual rights to whatever we write and publish on our blog.
Maybe another way of seeing this is:
We use Microsoft Word, Powerpoint to write and display our words, images over a network. Microsoft does not own our content as soon as we release it on Microsoft’s SharePoint web publishing platform.
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As a professional writer who got my career through my blog, and who has blogged here for over seven years, I’m going to tell you that you are overthinking this. You grant publishers the same rights when you allow them to publish your work in exchange for money. You are granting WP.com the right to publish your work, on your blog, in exchange for them putting ads on it (or purchase the No Ads upgrade). It’s that simple.
You will never be a writer if you don’t write. If you don’t publish, you will never be a writer that anyone other than yourself reads.
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