Time Inc. Rights Agreement

Norman_E

Norman_E

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As an occasional contributor to PBO and Yachting Monthly I have today received a letter from Time Inc asking me to sign an "All Rights" agreement in respect of future contributions. I have seen nothing wrong with the terms and conditions that I have signed in the past, but these new conditions appear to me to go a step too far. They require contributors to assign to Time Inc all rights to anything submitted to the magazines including giving up all moral rights to the work including the right to identified as the author, and the right to object to derogatory use of the work as enshrined in Sections 77 and 80 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

I do not feel inclined to accept such terms, which means that I am unlikely to get anything published in PBO again. What do other contributors think?
 
That's an absolute crock of shit. IPC's competitors, EMAP, tried that trick in the 90s. The cheque had to be endorsed on the back, giving them all moral rights in the work or it wouldn't clear.

It led to a lot of fuss. The NUJ led a campaign against it and most people objected to being arm-twisted, after the fact.
It was all dropped at the time.

It's a sneaky way of getting a vast archive of material they'll never have to pay for again. For the same reason you never want to send the BBC a "weather picture" for their local forecasts.
 
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Norman_E said:
As an occasional contributor to PBO and Yachting Monthly I have today received a letter from Time Inc asking me to sign an "All Rights" agreement in respect of future contributions. I have seen nothing wrong with the terms and conditions that I have signed in the past, but these new conditions appear to me to go a step too far. They require contributors to assign to Time Inc all rights to anything submitted to the magazines including giving up all moral rights to the work including the right to identified as the author, and the right to object to derogatory use of the work as enshrined in Sections 77 and 80 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

I do not feel inclined to accept such terms, which means that I am unlikely to get anything published in PBO again. What do other contributors think?
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I had one today as well. I remember signing something years ago for IPC, assumed it was the same. Issue is of course that if I dont sign they wont accept any more contributions?
On a slightly different tack, when I was doing monthly contributions I got a contributors copy free every month. Now that I only do occasional I dont, buying a copy has got more difficult! Normally Tesco was the best bet but even they dont stock now. Have looked in several and nada! Only place I have bought recently was in Manchester Airport. Whats going on? Are the new owners playing games?
S
 
skipper_stu said:
I had one today as well. I remember signing something years ago for IPC, assumed it was the same. Issue is of course that if I dont sign they wont accept any more contributions?
On a slightly different tack, when I was doing monthly contributions I got a contributors copy free every month. Now that I only do occasional I dont, buying a copy has got more difficult! Normally Tesco was the best bet but even they dont stock now. Have looked in several and nada! Only place I have bought recently was in Manchester Airport. Whats going on? Are the new owners playing games?
S
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This ..... http://adage.com/article/media/time-s-digital-audience-larger-print/296367/
 
Norman: ultimately, either you go along with it, or call their bluff. I'd suggest that you contact others who will have received similar communications from Time. I can't see Cunliffe signing such a piece of asswipe.

Time's idea makes sense in their overall commercial world, but not editorially. Editors generally don't like their contributors being mucked about (which in this case is a kindly way of saying "robbed"). EMAP (see Lakey's post) kept on at this for some years, a succession of execs taking over the baton from the previous one who'd tried and failed. One by one they were told to f**k off. Eventually the penny dropped and they did.

Good luck.
 
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skipper_stu said:
I had one today as well. I remember signing something years ago for IPC, assumed it was the same. Issue is of course that if I dont sign they wont accept any more contributions?
On a slightly different tack, when I was doing monthly contributions I got a contributors copy free every month. Now that I only do occasional I dont, buying a copy has got more difficult! Normally Tesco was the best bet but even they dont stock now. Have looked in several and nada! Only place I have bought recently was in Manchester Airport. Whats going on? Are the new owners playing games?
S
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We are away from home at present but I assume I have a similar letter there. My feeling at present, not having read the content of it, is that I may well not sign. It will be interesting to see what happens if many other contributors make the same decision.

Interesting about the free copies. I am now listed as a contributor to YM but have never received any free copies. OTOH YM religiously pay for anything they print, whereas many of the smaller items of mine that have been printed in PBO have remained unpaid.
 
http://www.phlmetropolis.com/Canute.jpg


I will sign anything anywhere anytime regarding my work and chasing people who have nicked it is not worth the candle (or four candles, flower pots,bread tins etc)

copyright is all but dead

the musicians have now recognised that the way to make money is by performing rather than attempting to flog digits they aligned thirty years ago. For the musos the digits that stream around the planet are just a way of getting people to turn up at concerts

the masters of the universe are those with the fat digital pipes that lead straight into your house and your pocket (Time inc, Google, google, Sony,google.)

if it is digits it is free

even the long tail is dead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail) apart from for the pipe owners

It gets a bit weird when my own material is beamed back onto my laptop to sell me stuff and certain services I did not even know people in my own house have been searching for

one of the compelling reasons for this freeing of information is that if I make a copy of your material then the digits are still there untouched and hardly worth protecting = if I nick your lawnmower then you are deprived of the benefit of it and it is therefore worth protecting by locking it up in the shed.

In addition,why should ideas and combinations of words and notes involve a functionally immortal flow of cash to the person who put them together when the bloke who did an honest days graft building a wall, a car only gets a one-off payment? Would you expect to get a royalty each year on that lovely excel spredsheet you slaved over in 2005?

distribution of images and ideas that used to involve trees chopped up into pulp smeared with ink from oil wells and countless men in vans bringing it to your door can now be distributed for almost free supported just by a few adverts for shiny cars or well endowed women - and in my opinion the world is a better place for the free flow of information and ideas and more trees being left to grow.



for many years the BBC contracts have included the lovely phrase that I am signing over my rights to the material in perpetuity and in the known and as yet unknown universe - so I think that more or less covers it

For my own part KTL is now all free with a little donation box - around ten blokes a day chip in a few sheckles to keep the future flow coming and in return they get a warm glow and hand crafted thank you email written on vellum. A few traditionalists want top buy the dvds to keep on their shelves - but not really enough of them now to justify creating the masters, burning the disks, printing the covers, putting them into jiffy bags.

There are thousands of other great sailing videos on the web that are available free without a donation box but they will also be arriving along with adverts for fast cars, diet programmes, skiing holidays, shoes and sex.

the whole of KTL 1 and 6 is up on the web for free

here is around five hours of free well produced, nicely mixed sailing video in HD

http://www.keepturningleft.co.uk/ca...ktl-1-blackwater-colne-and-walton-backwaters/

http://www.keepturningleft.co.uk/category/sailing-around-britain/ktl-6-humber-to-scotland/

the rest will follow as I upload it all to vimeo

so, my fellow PBO contributors roll with it or stop earning your already uneconomic £100 a page

it was only a hobby for you guys anyway.

there are a few people trying to earn a living - the salaried hacks at IPC and moptopTom who presumably earns most of his money from his £500 a night speakers fee and his ability to interract in an attractive way with a camera lens while bouncing along on the windward rail of a bit of maritime history

but his digits are spreading for freemans as well

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE1B3CAB4A6069131
 
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vyv_cox said:
We are away from home at present but I assume I have a similar letter there. My feeling at present, not having read the content of it, is that I may well not sign. It will be interesting to see what happens if many other contributors make the same decision.

Interesting about the free copies. I am now listed as a contributor to YM but have never received any free copies. OTOH YM religiously pay for anything they print, whereas many of the smaller items of mine that have been printed in PBO have remained unpaid.
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It was when I was doing my monthly column.
S
 
It gives a nice cosy glow to be given cash for first publication rights, who knows where it could lead? The Daily Telegraph Magazine, Hollywood? In reality, our thoughts on anchor dredging Morcambe Bay Prawners have little chance of inspiring a mini series on TV; no one was ever interested in republication, even less so now. Unless it is on the internet - see above.

So for a one off piece it may be as well to swallow it. If you have exceptional work, that you may want to cobble up into a book later or photography with a USP maybe speak to them about it?
 
I used to write for Sailing Today back in the days when Capt John Goode was the Ed, and we all retained the rights to our material. When he was gone and it changed ownership a few times in quick succession, the then owners changed the terms, but I don't recall ever signing and all the freelancers like me got dumped anyway as the thing struggled to stay afloat.
I have had a few bits and pics in YM in the last few years but before Time Inc came along. Even though any future contributions would be (as Dylan says) a 'hobby', I'm not all sure I'd sign such a thing if they wanted me to. How binding is such a contract? If I take 5 pics of something, all slightly different, sell one, say, to YM, am I free to use the other 4 any way I want? Similarly, written stuff, if I change a few words it's not the same article? Or is it? Is that what 'moral rights' means?
 
doug748 said:
It gives a nice cosy glow to be given cash for first publication rights, who knows where it could lead? The Daily Telegraph Magazine, Hollywood? In reality, our thoughts on anchor dredging Morcambe Bay Prawners have little chance of inspiring a mini series on TV; no one was ever interested in republication, even less so now. Unless it is on the internet - see above.

So for a one off piece it may be as well to swallow it. If you have exceptional work, that you may want to cobble up into a book later or photography with a USP maybe speak to them about it?
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there is a man who speaks sense -

if any literary canutes wish to make a stand and stop writing... all the better for the rest of us who can keep churning out the words while you chaps go off to dry your socks having failed to turn the tide

D
 
I write pieces on specific new items of marine electronics to be published in America, whatever I write is out of date at least within 6 months - as some new item of electronic wizardry is introduced and makes my piece of prose worthless. My 'technical' pieces on other items of marine equipment might not date quite so quickly but nothing I write has value in perpetuity, it all becomes yesterdays news very quickly (so why anyone would want publishing rights for ever seems to lack realism, but that's their problem). For the same publisher for some work I produce I am attributed as the author on other items the work is produced anonymously (I've never quite understood why) but many know I do the (anonymous) work and inexplicably (and contradictorily) all the images are credited as mine. I simply do not mind being, apparently, anonymous.

The conditions under which I work are much as Time seem to be introducing for YM and PBO. Other parts of the world are still a bit more relaxed, though, as mentioned above, ST did try to pin me down some time ago - but it then became academic as freelancers became redundant or too expensive - though maybe ST have dug themselves out of that hole - I hope so, I like to see healthy competition.

The sad thing is that as soon as anything is produced someone somewhere leaks a copy and I see it floating round freely in the ether (or less romantically posted on a Forum) - its not my loss (I'm paid for the work) but it is a loss for the publisher. But it is reality, the publisher has title - but he cannot actually control it anyway. I see work I have done being quoted by people here, on YBW, without any thought of crediting me, I'm not impressed by the individuals but its part of life today. Similarly within days of a competitive magazine publishing some topic in which I am known to have an interest - someone in America sends me a copy.


Provided I am paid an acceptable fee I am quite happy to assign anything to the publisher for them to do as they wish.


This thread could have the legs and passion of an anchor thread.

Jonathan
 
As my earlier post made clear (I hope) I have yet to read the letter. My concern would be over the use of material that I have previously submitted to a mag on my website or on the courses and talks that I give. Is Time Inc going to sue me for my use of my material?
 
vyv_cox said:
As my earlier post made clear (I hope) I have yet to read the letter. My concern would be over the use of material that I have previously submitted to a mag on my website or on the courses and talks that I give. Is Time Inc going to sue me for my use of my material?
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They may do. The agreement assigns to them all the rights you had to the material.
 
Norman_E said:
They may do. The agreement assigns to them all the rights you had to the material.
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This is an increasingly common tactic in contract law; a big purchasing firm proposes a seriously one sided contract in full knowledge that most of its smaller suppliers will have little option but to grin and bear it. Bigger fish will simply throw the contract at their in-house lawyers and a new contract will be agreed after an expensive game of legal ping pong.

In the case of smaller suppliers the purchaser typically earnestly assures the seller that they have no need to worry ....and more often than not they accept this assurance and carry on as usual. That is until a legal letter lands on their doormat asking them to stop whatever it is they have been doing! At this point the little supplier picks up the phone to complain, a day after which he receives a snotty letter informing him that the written agreement comprises the complete agreement between the said parties, superseded all prior agreements and that "no amendment to it can be effective unless documented in writing and signed by both parties".

My advice, NEVER EVER sign such a contract unless you are 100% happy to be bound by EVERY SINGLE LETTER of it.
 
Although I am just am amateur writer who pens the occasional article for the fun of it this agreement that Time seeks to impose has serious consequences for any professional writer or photographer. Commercially it is great for Time Inc who publish magazines in many markets. Under it they could pay you £100 for a one page article in PBO, then publish the same article complete with your photos in a magazine sold in the USA, Canada or any other English speaking country, or translate it to any other language to publish it anywhere else, all without even acknowledging your authorship, let alone paying you. I used to write the occasional article on model engineering topics and found that US magazines paid much more per page than UK ones. I suspect that is still the case so a professional photographer or author could lose out considerably. As an individual I am actually more concerned that this agreement seeks to remove an author's moral rights to be acknowledged as author and not to have his work tampered with or changed without consent.
 
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