Workflow:Writing Snagging Writer Blogs Without Permission [UPDATE]

There's a site called Workflow:Writing that has a list of blogs about writing. Although I can't speak to all in that long list, I heard from one, on a writers' board, who had until recently been on the list. No one had asked her permission. This site took her RSS feed and posted it, along with all the other sites, and had advertising displayed against it. Click on one of the article links, and you get the original page, only in a frame with a top section that shows a banner ad and the Workflow:Writing logo. Maybe this one woman's blog was the only one stolen - because that's what you call it when you appropriate someone else's property for your own gain. But I have a funny feeling that if I checked with the other bloggers, I'd be hard-pressed to find one that had given explicit permission. If you blog about words, check the link and see if its own had co-opted you. And if you don't, consider stopping by there and expressing your dismay over people who want to cash in on the hard work of others. This site is worse than a writers' mill. At least those offer some token payment. One ironic point: one site with at least one article posted is PlagiarismToday.

UPDATE: Make that two writers whose work has appeared and who said that they hadn't given permission. Any guesses on how many did give permission? Do I hear ... none?

8 Points to Smarter Client Contracts

A friend and colleague recently asked me if I had a contract template that I used for clients. I said that I didn't because my contracts are generally heavily tailored to the specifics of an engagement. However, I was able to point to seven different clauses that I like to include to protect myself. Here they are, plus an eight that my publication and IP lawyer, Anthony Elia, had suggested for future use as I was suing an ex-client:

1. Whether a work-made-for-hire contract or not, no rights should transfer until you get the final payment for the job. If the assignment consists of multiple parts and the client pushes back, you might consider transferring rights to parts as payment for them is completed, if you can separate them out. But if a client balks completely on such an arrangement, I walk. If they're not willing to say that they can only use material if I'm completely paid, then they're saying that they're not interested in upholding their end of the deal. I have better ways to spend my time.
2. I charge late fees for payment in arrears. Again, this should be a non-negotiable. Companies want to charge me late fees if I don't pay on time, and I don't see why I should underwrite someone else's financing.
3. Have a clean definition of the work and then an hourly fee for requests beyond that definition. If the client cannot agree to a clear work specification, then it is going to ask for more and more to be done for the same fee, either trying to push the boundaries to get more for its money or because it is confused and inefficient. In neither case am I willing to give something away for nothing in return. That's not to say that I don't do favors for regular clients. I do. But that's with an ongoing relationship where I get plenty of return for my investment.
4. Give a hard deadline for reviews, with drafts past that date getting contractual automatic acceptance. Generally, payment in corporate assignments keys on acceptance of parts of a project. You do not want to be waiting for money because someone or other won't bother to look at what you've done. This protects you against that, largely by acting as a goad to get the client to do the reviews it owes you. Make the deadlines reasonable, but not too long. I find that two weeks max is a good timetable for getting a review done.
5. You are the service provider, so make sure that any legal disputes, whether state or federal court, are in your home jurisdiction. You don't want to go to another state to sue for money owed you. Similarly, get your state's laws as the ones governing the contract. If the client won't go for that, then eliminate the requirement completely. Don't allow them to insist that you agree to jurisdiction in their area, because, frankly speaking, if legal issues come up, you're most likely to be the plaintiff, not the defendant.
6. Explicitly address expenses and any other item that might reduce your income. Don't expect to work such things out after the fact.
7. Make deadlines offset from when you actually get the expected payments. So if the first should be in a month, make it a month after you have the signed contract and deposit. Before you've signed the contract is when you have maximum leverage in negotiation. Once you start work, your leverage decreases exponentially with the time you've put in.
8. The final point is to try to include a clause that has the loser in a legal action responsible for the legal costs of the winner. I had thought this a danger, but my lawyer pointed out that the chances were overwhelmingly likely that I'd be the one having to take action, and getting costs covered if you have a good case becomes a goad to getting people to settle

Keeping Up With Media Law

The law moves slowly - as it should. Whether common law or statute, you want relatively stable rules of the road so you can live your life and do business with some degree of predictability. And when you're in the media - and pretty much everyone reading this blog is likely in the media - law becomes particularly important. You have a host of things that can come up:

• libel and defamation
rights of privacy and publicity of people you cover
• people suing because they took whatever advice you offered and didn't like the results
• infringement of intellectual property
• actual or simply alleged copyright infringement
• new potential uses of material, which means new rights to consider

That's just a start off the top of my head. However, the world does not move at the same speed of the law. Just a few years ago, you wouldn't have been able to talk about Twitter. Cell phone information delivery? Pretty new. Technology is stretching the bounds of where material can appear and in what context legal issues can arise. That's why I'd suggest reading Can the law keep up with technology? on CNN.com. There aren't many answers, but a lot of questions you need to be considering.

Google Books Expands to Magazines

Scanning paper is scanning paper, so there should be little surprise that Google has already moved past just books and gone into magazines. (Thanks to Randy Hecht for pointing this out to me yesterday.) As I write this, there seem to be just under 90 titles available, including many that you've heard of. The number of issues varies. For example, in one case I noticed that the most recent issue was a year old, whereas for Popular Science, up to March 2009 was scanned in, going back to only 2000. Various issues of Mother Jones from the 1970s up through 2000 appeared, though not the whole run and nothing more recent.

That makes me wonder whether the magazine publishers have even known that this was going on. Remember that the book publishers were taken by surprise. As I understand copyright, depending on what permissions publishers may or may not have given, the question of whether anyone owes money to writers can be pretty confusing. National Geographic has been successful in arguing that reproductions on CDs of actual pages of past magazines are an extension of the original publishing, and so may be covered under the rights they licensed, even if writers or photographers granted only limited rights. Would inclusion in such a format also be governed? I have no idea. I know offhand that a number of the titles have never asked for all rights, exclusive or not.

And what if the publishers didn't know? Are we going to see another class action suit? Will any of the writers' organizations get involved? Will anyone other than the publishers have standing to sue? I see a lot of questions and few clear answers.

Gresham's Law of the Web: Crap Content Quashes Quality

This is actually a link to a post I did on BNET a couple of days ago. People have asked me what damage writer mills can really cause. Here's my answer - and it's a much bigger picture than how much some writers make:

Gresham's Law of the Web: Crap Content Quashes Quality