h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You do all realise that the reason that the BBC are using our license money to pay for this stuff to be pulped and pre-digested is that it's a commercial resource and it'll eventually be sold as such?

Have any of you read the T&C's? All content submitted (including this) becomes the fully licensed property of the BBC in perpetuity. We explicitely cede all legal and moral rights to it (hint: the moral right to be identified as the author). Go read the T&C's before flaming this as ludicrous.

What makes this even funnier is the disclaimer that the posts represent the opinion of the poster, not the BBC. They're having their cake and eating it too. This is only my second post here, but it'll be my last unless this policy is changed. I don't appreciate paying £100+ a year for a service that only broadcasts the dross while selling the best bits back to me on pay channels or (soon to be) pay websites.

Hello Researcher 174503, and may I be the first to welcome you to h2g2? :-D If you activate your home space by writing a little about yourself, then people can leave you messages there. This isn't the best place to raise these kinds of issues. You'd be better off at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A452125 - the community soapbox. That way you might actually get a response - the powers that be aren't telepathic, and they can't change a policy unless you give them a good reason to change that policy. Incidentally, I've raised the 'moral right' thing here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F41019?thread=112911

Looks like new Researchers joining in the Aftermath, are being turned off by the TOCs - The Beeb need to take notice of this.....

You retain copyright of everything you submit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/DontPanic-Contrib#3

You _do_ grant the BBC a non-exclusive license to publish it.

What's wrong with that? Please get the facts right.

This is very late but here it is anyway:

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The thing we're complaining about is that h2g2 isn't -their- pool, it's -ours-. None of this would be here if it weren't for us. We built it. They stole it out from under us, changed the rules, and then 'kindly' invited us back to give them more while they take away our means to give. I don't think this is what DNA had in mind.

I know this isn't the sign-up sheet, but I've only just found the place, and haven't the time to delve through all the fora atm. However, please add me to the roster.

'Nonnie -- the original pessimist

That's what I thought... But signing away the Moral right to be known as the Author - doesn't that contradict that?

Sorry, but I don't want this to drop into The Great Copyright Conspiracy again. Part of the reason we don't have the 'right' to be identified as authors is that most of us don't even have our real names connected with our accounts in any way. Therefore, asking to have everyone properly identified is kind of like trying to get blood from a stone.

So?

Many writers use Nom de Plumes... Doesn't mean they lose the Moral right to be identified as the Author....

If what you are saying is right (and OK I'll admit is can be difficult to get someone's REAL id) then we could all at any time take anything off this site and publish it and no-one would be able to sue for copyright theft as the author could never be id'ed.

Best way to do this would be: If the Beeb want to publish stuff posted here anywhere else, they E-mail the Author (we all had to give our E-mail addresses when we signed on) and ask for permission. If they are worried about not getting an answer they could post something to the users homespace also....

Specifically, they could ask if the author objected. If there was no response in, say, 30 days, assent would be assumed, thus avoiding the problems inherent in "abandoned" accounts.

For example, a vegetarian author might object to having an extract of their work included in a "Barbecue Beef Special" of one of the BBC's cookery publications...

My thoughts exactly. It would always be nice to know where your work is going to appear!

Yes, but there isn't the slightest inkling that BBC is planning to publish anything from h2g2 in any form.

Honestly, it seems that h2g2 has been designated as its own department and now gets relatively little attention from outside. While it is of course possible that our content will be used by the BBC, there is still a great probability that we will be informed beforehand by the h2g2 employees, who presumably would know about it beforehand.

In the end, we are having a theoretical discussion about a worst-case scenario which doesn't actually exist. Even then, we are only able to raise this to the level of Conspiracy by assuming the worst out of h2g2 employees who have been on the whole very kind to us so far.

All the disclaimers and legal jargon in the T&C reserves the right for BBC to engage in (what we would see as a) worst-case scenario. And again, I don't understand this whole thing about researchers relinquishing their "moral rights." Maybe this is a specific legal term that I'm not familiar with, but it sounds like people who in the past have signed away all their legal rights to a work have later attempted to claim some "moral right."

These moral rights ought to be moot by law, if you've really already given up your legal rights. They've already established their rights by the court of law, but they further want to ensure they're covered in a "court of public opinion." Legal jargon and T&C just doesn't work at protecting people from judgements of morality or public opinion.

It's as though they wrote a clause in the T&C: "Even if you later realize that these terms are more harsh than you expected, even if you never read this bit or totally skimmed the whole T&C without reading, you agree not to complain when we use the legal rights that you hereby sign over to us, and you won't even bitch about it in the kind of futile way that makes bad publicity." Or better yet: "By using the h2g2 system or agreeing to these Terms and Conditions, the user promises not to whine about anything."

...That said, I don't think it's really a big deal that we have all given up these rights. If anyone here can really write something of that much value, they need to be submitting it to real publishers that pay, or else self-publishing.

As long as researchers are aware of all this, which they should be if they read and understood the T&C they signed to.

But I know the kind of "conspiracy" you're talking about Fragilis. I've seen little petitions or rants crop up on community soapbox or on some writing hubs within h2g2. People act like it's an outrage that BBC would establish these kinds of rights for themselves in the T&C, but it's really kind of a standard through-out the industry for webhosting. If you have a page on tripod or geocities, they probably also reserve the right to use your stuff for publicity or any way they want. (Although they probably haven't signed away rights to publishing your works in all future media yet to be invented. Can that part even stand up in a court of law? Weird.)

Can it stand up in a court of law? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends on the quality of each side's lawyers.

For an example of "no," courts are tending to rule in favor of authors who complain that they sold their works for newspaper or magazine publication, and are now seeing those same works published on the internet without due credit or additional payment. This includes cases where the writers' contract explicitly reserved rights for all future or potential media. The courts are finding that authors can not be 'duly warned' about publication in a media which doesn't exist yet. Authors, especially those who signed their contracts before the Internet age, are getting payment for past dues.

Chances are, this argument would not work too well for h2g2 researchers whose works are published in a book, etc.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1325000/audio/_1327954_whitehouse.ram

> "Best way to do this would be: If the Beeb want to publish stuff posted here anywhere else, they E-mail the Author (we all had to give our E-mail addresses when we signed on) and ask for permission."

Great idea - until someone says "no", or asks for cash, and then the BBC are screwed. Specifically, what happens when they want to allow access to h2g2 via TelepathyNet (newly invented in 2023) - if people say no, or demand cash, then all of a sudden great holes start to open up in the guide. Oh dear, think the lawyers - I wish we'd asked for full redistribution rights back in 2,001...

Seriously, is anybody writing stuff here that has individual value? Even if I later become an actual writer, I'd be looking at stuff here as free advertising - mention it to publishers or whatever, give the URL, and use it as an example to stimulate interest. Money that h2g2 makes will probably go on better servers and stuff for h2g2 - and to repay the vast investment that was put in up front - and both of these things seem entirely fair to me.

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Unfortunately they would likely be under the same sort of gag order they were before the foop.

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When GeoCities placed this type of 'clause' in their TOS (right about the same time Yahoo swallowed them up) there was such an outcry (and exodus to ISPs that didn't claim rights to customer's material) that they were forced to change it, so that they only had the right to publish it on their other _web_ servers and such. Many others were soon discovered and followed suit. Although I wouldn't doubt that they've quietly slipped them back in.

Nice one Peet!

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You mean like the great "mass email" that they were supposed to send to let everybody know that h2g2 was up and running again? That was more like a commitment -- they told us they were going to send a mass email, and it has not gone out yet due to whatever email system problems (or problems of making a timely publicity effort when they give the official launch date?).

As much as I see them as friendly people in general, and I don't mean this as an insult to h2g2 staff, I really doubt that anyone at h2g2 will go out of their way to let us all know about our entries being used in other media or formats. They'll probably announce it on the front page.