War of Words Wednesday: Author Permissions
We’ve been having a couple of interesting conversations on some of the message boards about the issue of authors and ownership. Those conversations inspired this week’s War of Words Wednesday.
Authors are often paid to produce material which becomes the property of the employer. In a recent case, a series of columns penned by John Grogan is being published by the Philadelphia Inquirer without Grogan’s consent or participation. So today’s question is:
Who was in the right in this debate: Grogan or the Inquirer?
And as a follow-up question:
Do you think that writers give up the right to protect/edit/promote work if the work was produced for a specific purpose (for example, a column or a blog)? If a writer is paid to produce a piece of work, should the person or company who paid for the work be allowed to alter, delete or promote it without permission from the writer?
author, blogger, permission, copyright, protect, promote
June 27th, 2007 at 7:33 am
It depends what the contract was at the time he signed really.
Also, my way of thinking is if you write an article for a set fee, then you accept that you’ve sold that piece of work on to another person. If however, you are writing for a revenue share due to traffic etc, then once you stop producing work, and therefore making money, the content should revert back to you.
June 27th, 2007 at 9:14 am
I think it really depends on the contract he was working under at the time. I think it’s shady that they would operate this way, but no one has ever accused businesses of acting out of anything other than self-interest. I do think and they should be required to point out any changes they made to the authors work, especially if the still intend to attribute the work to them. I’d hate to have written something and then see something completely different show up with my name still on it.
One point I’ll have to disagree with DaveP on is that revenue share model does not mean that you will get continuous residual payment for your work, rather that if you are writing quality work that draws in higher traffic you are rewarded with a larger slice of the pie than say the guy who writes a TV blog and only posts once a week
It qualifies more as a merit based pay scale as opposed to a flat rate. It rewards those who can generate quality highly visited content.
June 27th, 2007 at 10:20 am
I wanted to add another question to this, if ya don’t mind? Hope not….
Recently I blogged my name to see what type of content I still had out there. I’m a freelance writer and had blogged several sites in the past. Well, one has since slowly died out, not sure if it is completely dead or not. However this past week I typed in my name to show my son (he’s 10) things I’d written. Most of these were baby talking blogs, as in jogging strollers and such things. Imagine my surprise as we click on the jogging stroller blog and immediately brought to a porn site. The beginning of the entry was mine (search engine) but once ya clicked it it was NO where near what I’d ever done and he got an eye full. Any suggestions? I know when I signed the contract it had nothing to do with porn.
June 27th, 2007 at 10:22 am
Love your way of thinking Dave, not sure how many others agree. Now please look at what I just asked. Granted it was a set fee but the terms never stated it would later become this.
June 28th, 2007 at 3:31 am
Frankly, it depends entirely on the contract. And if the details aren’t spelled out in the contract, then both the magazine’s and the author’s lawyers really screwed up.
June 28th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Homemom3 -
I’d check your contract and then send a cease and desist letter.
July 1st, 2007 at 8:19 am
Keylly- Thank you, I’ll go back over that. Yes, I did try writing the “Current” site but all they say is they aren’t a parking site? No clue what that meant but I am sure I click on my article in google and it goes straight to that page.