Copyright – Schmopyright
July 24, 2008 by Marcus Grimm
Several months back, we wrote about Issuu, a free DIY service for digital magazines, which works fine, so long as you’re into donating your content to others:
By distributing or disseminating Uploader Submissions through the Issuu Service, you hereby grant to Issuu a worldwide, non-exclusive, transferable, assignable, fully paid-up, royalty-free, license to host, transfer, display, perform, reproduce, distribute, and otherwise exploit your Uploader Submissions, in any media forms or formats, and through any media channels, now known or hereafter devised, including without limitation, RSS feeds, embeddable functionality, and syndication arrangements in order to distribute, promote or advertise your Uploader Submissions through the Issuu Service.
Whenever you’re talking "free" and "DIY," that’s a nice recipe for getting a lot of submissions that the users don’t have permission for and for a while Issuu seemed to be the Net’s largest repository for liberated content…until now.
Mygazines is a company like Issuu that’s been released in beta format. Like Issuu, it’s free and like Issuu, it’s a DIY product. Like Issuu, there seems to be lot of content that the publishers never dreamed would end up there. And like Issuu, they seem to have little regard for people trying to make money with content:
Mygazines may remove any Content and Mygazines accounts at any time for any reason (including, but not limited to, upon receipt of claims or allegations from third parties or authorities relating to such Content), or for no reason at all.
Of course, I could be overreacting. After all, anyone concerned about their content could always contact "John Smith," the name of the person who registered the URL (accordinging to WhoIs). Better yet, go visit the company, which claims to be located in Anguilla.
Thanks for the comment, Martin.
I think your comparison to YouTube is interesting… because most people aren’t uploading their core product to YouTube. With a magazine, a publisher is giving you their livelihood. I can’t see why they would want to let you do whatever you want with it.
While I think that Issuu is a wonderful solution for the “YouTube” crowd, I think the loose terms aren’t in the best interest of a publisher that must meet the demands of both their readers and advertisers.
RE: Google indexing. Congrats. on the upgrade. You’ll note I wrote that post on Feb. 7 and your own blog announces the release of the feature on on March 3.
M
Hi Marcus. Thanks for mentioning Issuu again. We always listen and appreciate when an established company in our field takes notice of our work.
I thought I’d just clarify a few things.
The paragraph you quote from our Terms is pretty standard stuff, not unlike what you see on YouTube and similar online communities, and it shouldn’t be read out of context. We recommend anyone interested in Issuu to read the whole text.
Anyone uploading content on Issuu remains in control and can instantly delete their account, including all submissions. We share exactly the same ambitions as our members and would never do anything to jeopardize that mutual trust. It would simply be bad business for everyone. For the record, I should add that we haven’t changed our Terms since we launched in 2007.
At Issuu we want to make online publishing easy, appealing and available to anyone with a message. A WhoIs lookup for Issuu.com will tell you that we have nothing to hide.
Finally, you mentioned in your previous post about us that we are not indexed by Google. A quick Google search will show you that we are in fact very much on their radar (http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aissuu.com+inurl%3A%2Fdocs%2F).
Thank you for giving us this chance to clarify a few things about Issuu.