I have waited until I was sure the blogster team was on-line to write this because I need an answer from them. I have been arguing for a bit of time with Edjamacator about the fact social networking communities i.e. blogging communities are in the rat race to make money, even blogster, eventually, this not some philanthropic endeavor and in saying this I am not saying anything negative, it is just a fact of life. The owners here did not pay a lot of money just to watch it burn.
That said, while I blog many places and was once upset because of the change I had to step back a moment and after following the, ”teams” articles can see they want to make changes for the better, are willing to listen to their community and are capable of doing so!
I do not have any wish to leave, sometimes though our wishes and dreams are thwarted against our will.
You see I was arguing with Edjamacator on ekyprogressive blog Done with Bugster...Taking my blogging elsewhere....
That every single blogger here weather you like them or not is valuable to Blogster and them leaving is a very bad thing in terms of readership and blogeyes because this is a very small community right now and there are not people flocking to join and there never have been. What makes people come here is the content and that is also what makes them stay. James(eky) is a well read prolific blogger and his loss would be felt as would the loss of the people he took with him and the bad word of mouth. I do not want to see that happen even if I do not agree with his personal politics. I feel this is just a fact as I am sure most can understand this concept as well.
If someone owns “Joe’s Diner” and Jane goes there and the food is terrible and she sees a roach she is not going to go back and she will, as studies have shown, tell at least ten people who will never eat at Joes. Those people will go elsewhere and if it keeps happening Joes will close down eventually.
Unfortunately I may have been right about this but I was very wrong about something else. Something that actually surpasses and little bugs or aesthetic changes made on blogster and this is the TERMS of SERVICE. I am a big time blogger and this is only one place that I blog and am very versed on copyright laws because there is a lot of thievery in my industry by new people who often do not know better. Lawyers are a must.
I remember being asked a year or so ago by two bloggers who were going to leave because of the old TOS because they did not understand the language and thought that blogster took over ownership of their intellectual property however in the old terms of service it said exactly the opposite.
Now however , as it reads, those fears are absolutely grounded. Edjamacator pointed this out to me when I explained to someone, based on the old terms of service, that we own our articles, our intellectual property. He the posted the new terms of service that have been changed, changes I was unaware of and they say clearly:
If you submit any information to us, including any comments, remarks, suggestions, ideas, notes, drawings, graphics, concepts, recipes, or other information, you are giving that information, and all your rights in it, to BLOGSTER.COM free of charge, and that information will be treated as non-confidential and non-proprietary and may be used by BLOGSTER.COM for any purpose, without your consent or any compensation to you or anyone else. This is true whether you submit such information to us by e-mail, through a form on the Site, on a bulletin board, or in any other manner. BLOGSTER.COM may from time to time monitor, review and, in its sole discretion, modify or delete any postings you make on the Site however, BLOGSTER.COM is not obligated to do so.
So this says blogster owns everything we publish here right down to recipes?
Am I reading this wrong?
No where in the T.OS guaranteeing the publisher i.e. the blogger their intellectual rights to their articles. I have yet to see a TOS that does NOT do this as you can see below,
Old blogster TOS:
The Provider does not claim ownership of the Content you place on your Blog. Publishers retain the rights to any copyrighted material posted on a particular Blog. Publisher hereby warrants that he or she owns all rights to any and all materials that Publisher places on Publishers Blog, or that Publisher has all necessary rights and permissions to use the material in such manner. By submitting Content to the Provider for inclusion on your Blog, you grant the Provider 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 on the Provider's Internet properties. This license exists only for as long as you continue to be the Provider's customer and shall be terminated at the time your Blog is terminated.
Face Book:
When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content. Facebook does not assert any ownership over your User Content; rather, as between us and you, subject to the rights granted to us in these Terms, you retain full ownership of all of your User Content and any intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights associated with your User Content.
My Space:
MySpace.com does not claim any ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, "Content") that you post to the MySpace Services. After posting your Content to the MySpace Services, you continue to retain all ownership rights in such Content, and you continue to have the right to use your Content in any way you choose. By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content on or through the MySpace Services, you hereby grant to MySpace.com a limited license to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute such Content solely on and through the MySpace Services.
Live Jornal:
LiveJournal claims no ownership or control over any Content posted by its users. The author retains all patent, trademark, and copyright to all Content posted within available fields, and is responsible for protecting those rights, but is not entitled to the help of the LiveJournal staff in protecting such Content. The user posting any Content represents that it has all rights necessary to post such Content (and for LiveJournal to serve such Content) without violation of any intellectual property or other rights of third parties, or any laws or regulations;
Blogger:
Your Intellectual Property Rights. Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services. You or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any Content you submit, post or display on or through Google services and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying and distributing Google services. Google furthermore reserves the right to refuse to accept, post, display or transmit any Content in its sole discretion.
That is just an example of the rules and protections we have come to expect as bloggers.
So now anyone who writes, is an artist, a chef or cook who posts new recipes, new ideas and there are quite a few of each, they have just given up all rights to their blogs by pressing submit.
So basically you are saying you can, if you wish too complie all the articles in the recipes, section publish a recipe book, sell it and give absolutely no credit to the authors?
Or for the people who have published their books here you can copy it, compile it and sell it and give it to who ever you want to be authored by whomever you want?
I cannot comprehend this and can only think it must be an oversight but if edumacator is right, and it is worded exactly as they want it to be I cannot post on blogster anymore other than excerpts of other peoples copy written work and attribute it to them, come just to say hi and comment on blogs in a very limited capacity and tell silly jokes that are all over the internet anyway. I cannot post any original writings, use any of the graphics I make or use or pieces or complete writings I sell or plan to sell.
What no one really knew here was that both Johnny and I are writers.
I still have faith that this is and oversight and some language will be added to the tos to protect us from our works being in effect given away for free and relinquishing our rights to them.
Now I feel like an idiot for assuring people in the past that Blogster old or new was not in fact stealing our work because I have no idea when the TOS changed.
Team could you please address this issue and let me know if their will be changes to the TOS and when it can be expected or if you plan to stand by it?
Thank-you Holly
33 comments on Am I giving it away for FREE?
Add a comment
To add comments without entering your email and image verification, you must be logged in. Login or Join Blogster
I kinda wish that with the change, I'd been intelligent enough to read the TOS again (or perhaps it would've been a better thing for them to have it indicated somehow it had changed if they hadn't)...I feel like a shmuck. :( Thanks for the info!
I am hoping they will change it, that is why I debated about writng this since last night. I cannot stay, well at least in the way I am used to , if this is in fact how they want it.
I was relly hoping they would answer me
I had no idea that all the blogs were the property of the site. I'm not thinking of myself, but all those who have posted their original poetry and the art work.
Exactly. I just found out myself last night.
Still waiting for a response!
I've known that from the start and have warned others about it--especially people like redwolftimes who writes great poetry--bottom line though is I wonder what would happen if it was fought in court.
I have all intentions to publish a book including some of my blogs (like my 'fighting fat' series) and I wonder if their copyright extends that far.
I do not write much of my stuff that is going in “our” book here on blogster but I have. I also write mail that my customers have to pay for and sometimes when it expires I put it here. I have at least three ladies who have loaned me the use of their copywritten pictures to use to talk about them on my blog, I have written articles here then sold them to my callers. I will cease doing this until the team has answered and reduce my blog to nothing more than fluff because I cannot deal with this and the old blogster did protect us so are our old blogs protected under a grandfather clause as they were written before the change of ownership/tos?
This is highly disturbing to me be cause so many of my original graphics are on her here and those that I have sold to others.
I am sorry I was not paying better attention
"This is highly disturbing to me be cause so many of my original graphics are on her here and those that I have sold to others."
Whatever was recognized as yours prior to the change of the TOS should still be yours. They can't change the rules on you after the fact and appropriate/steal your content that was still recognized as yours under the previous TOS. In any case, this shows the importance of watermarking anything you want to protect with a copyright mark.
And now it's time for me to make my final entry at Blogster. But first...
DISCLAIMER: Per the terms of the NEW BLOGSTER TERMS OF SERVICE, these remarks are not my own but belong to BLOGSTER.
Well darlin looks like I will be meeting you on the other side
Good investigation,on your part,Holly.You do have a lot to lose by staying here.You bring many outsiders to the site.This is really shocking to find out.I don't post much and it's nothing really original,so it doesn't matter to me.I just think the site is so slow and I can't post pictures.I just stay because I have some friends here that I like to keep in touch with.I think after this post,many people will leave.Please still write a post once in awhile.I think you are one very intelligent girl and I have a lot of respect for you.
Laurie
I will but noting that is anything more than fluff. I really wrote this to get their response and maybe a change but they have not answered.
What a stupid, selfish change Blogster has made to the TOS. I wonder why? That is definitely something to consider. While most of my entries are nothing more than daily rants and reflections, I did hope to post some of my poetry and paintings on here. Thanks for the heads up. I think I may have to consider looking elsewhere as well...
I wish it were not like this. I was actually at a place where I was becoming used to the new blogster if not comfortable worst of all I was becoming trusting.
:( thank you for pointing that out to us... That is a sad change
yes it is but aside from that how have you been doing?
Technically, Team Blogster might want to rethink that change.
We are thinking about the original material that they might claim of ours. But what about the idiot that steals someone else's original (copy written) work and uses it here on Blogster? By claiming ownership in whole, or in part, Blogster could be sued because a blogger used it here. A judge could point to that TOS and say- "Hey Blogster, you claim rights to the material, therefore you are responsible for the content."
I believe that is why the other sites want no part of the content. (Too many freakin lawsuits.)
Anything that I write for newspapers, I do not put here. The last thing that I had copy written only cost $35 bucks to do. If someone had a book idea, they should copy write it anyway. You can also mail a copy to yourself and keep the letter sealed.
I have had comedy pictures taken from me. But most of my stuff is "date sensitive" and is old news within two weeks.
People can take your ideas, but they cannot take your mind.
Great article Holly, I would have never noticed the change.
I hate being the beareer of bad news and have tried very hard to keep this article in the most popular to get them to read it and I put a link on their articles but I have not gotten an answer yet. When I first founf out I sent them this horrid little e-mail with so many typos and misspellings It musta looked like something pre-k kid wrote!
Dear gawd! That's ridiculous...
Guess it's back to myspace for bloggin?
I can't navigate here anymore anyways... bleh!
I just wish they would answer surely they would see this is no good?
Rights, rights, rights always someone after them. gOVERment, blogster, alla time. Thanks for this awareness. Perhaps if we together tell blogster many of us will leave unless the TOS provides protection for our own material. Or, we could all write nasty threats to bush and company on blogster. Than blogster would be tossed into bush's jail, as it is blogster material.
That is why I am going to try to keep this article fresh and popular so maybe they will look.
The problem is hits are nto registered it seems from those outside blogster . I had three friends come look at it who are not members and their hits never registered not to mention the mass of collers I sent the link to and I know they looked because they whined, "it's so long do I have to read it!"
Sent a msg to Kendal who was in Customer Support. HELP is "comming soon" so when they get "up" we can discuss this with management.
Perhaps she will answer.
http://kendall.blogster.com/
I edited my adios page. I'm not content with the offer that they're looking at changing it, I'm pissed that they never notified anyone of any changes the way other sites do when changing TOS.
As for me,Ditto with Laurie above..
Holly, as bad as the TOS are, they don't even come close to the so-called "Privacy Policy." I wrote about it here: http://catdancer.blogster.com/blogsters-privacy-policy
In essence, it allows Blogster to steal our identity if they so choose. The document says we can submit a form to opt out, but I can't find the form. There is a lot more to it, please read the policy or go to my article. (I feel like a hypocrite, because I hate it when other bloggers try to promote their own posts in comments.)
I assumed that blogster had tertiary or at least some electronic copyright of all blog entries (unless they give up the rights) since they own the pages we post on. This is quite different from, say, Usenet, where the writer retains all rights.
You did a real service for everyone here by bringing the nasty facts to the attention of Blogster support -- although the fact that the TOS were changed without notification to ongoing users may have invalidated the entire TOS.
All blog sites i have ever seen allow you to retain all rights but make it so those rights are extended for them to use your articles to promote their site and your blog.
Great research, great info, but I'm certainly not happy to hear about it. Thanks for the enlightenment!
Any time darlin'
Hey holly, so we are non-paid workers now. HA! I'll be logging in and stuff when I get my own internet service back, using at work at the moment. Had to say HI!!!
looking for some miniskirted pics of you