"rights" entries

Instagram: On being the product

Getting customers to use a service and then changing the rules isn't a decent way to treat people.

Let me start by saying that I’m not an Instagram user, and never have been. So I thought I could be somewhat dispassionate. But I’m finding that hard. The latest change to their terms of service is outrageous: their statement that, by signing up, you are allowing them to use your photographs without permission or compensation in any way they choose. This goes beyond some kind of privacy issue. What are they doing, turning the service into some kind of photographic agency with unpaid labor?

I’m also angered by the response that users should be willing to pay. Folks, Instagram doesn’t have a paid option. You can be as willing as you want to be, and you don’t have the opportunity. Saying that users should be willing to pay is both clueless and irrelevant. And even if users did pay, I don’t see any reason to assume that a hypothetical “Instagram Pro” would have terms of service significantly different.

It really doesn’t have to be this way. I’ve used Flickr for a number of years. I’m one of the few who thinks that Flickr is still pretty awesome, even if it isn’t as awesome as it was back in the day. And I’ve had a couple of offers from people who wanted to use my photographs in commercial publications. One I agreed to, one I refused. That’s how things should work. Read more…

Digital authors need a whole new set of skills

Dana Newman on how authors can best embrace the e-pocalypse.

Dana Newman, a transactional and intellectual property attorney, on how authors should change behaviors and actions to protect themselves in — and make the most of — the digital age.

Bloomsbury eyes worldwide rights

The move to replace the geographic territory publishing model with a global model is gaining speed.

Attorney and literary agent Dana Newman says Bloomsbury's move to worldwide rights is just the beginning.

The App Store and the Long Tail Part 2: The Real "DRM" At Stake

A few weeks ago I wrote about how the small number of sales from many different countries were adding up to more than the large number of sales from the US in the App Store for our books. Our success got me wondering why there’s not stronger interest from other publishers, especially trade publishers, in iPhone apps (besides concerns about pricing and the approval process). Then as I was looking at rankings for some of the top paid book apps, I spotted a possible answer.

Visualizing the Advantages of StartWithXML

Here are two ways to think about why a StartWithXML workflow can be important and valuable: 1. Until very recently, we lived in a world where the book was the sun and everything else orbited around it. Now the CONTENT, the IP, is the sun, and the book is relegated to one of the satellite bodies (still often the biggest,…

[TOC Community] How Does Digital Affect Territorial Rights?

Over on the TOC Community, David Henley poses interesting questions about rights and territories: With the looming ebook and international POD availability, won't the traditional territorial rights market start to become shaky? Especially for publishers in countries like Australia whose main income comes from distributing US and UK owned content? Related Stories: Join the TOC Community…

Colleges Weigh Blanket Copyright Licenses vs Fair Use Rights

The Copyright Clearance Center is extending its offer of blanket licenses to larger universities. In a 2007 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required), some school administrators expressed concern about the implicit waiver of fair use assertions: But some librarians are ambivalent about blanket licenses, Mr. Rehbach [Jeffrey R. Rehbach, the library-policy adviser at Middlebury College] says,…

Copyright Clearance and Transaction Use Permits

There are times at a conference when several people tell you, “You have to talk to Person-X” and no matter how hard you try to align schedules, it just doesn’t happen.  At the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference, for me, that Person-X was John Billington of the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC).  John is the Product Manager for New Media at…