[LINK] All submitted comments become the property of SBS

[Stilgherrian]

On 26/09/2010, at 8:09 AM, Kim Holburn wrote:
> I just noticed this at the bottom of an SBS news page.  It only occurs  
> where a page is opened for comment and it seems to occur on any page  
> that's open for comment and not all are for reasons that are not clear  
> at all.  Is this legal, moral or even a good idea? Is it a valid  
> contract?
> 
>> PLEASE NOTE: All submitted comments become the property of SBS. We  
>> reserve the right to edit and/or amend submitted comments. HTML tags  
>> other than paragraph, line break, bold or italics will be removed  
>> from your comment.
>> 
> 
> 
> Here's a sample link with the text:
> http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1364046/Singh-issues-please-explain

There's no difference between this and, say, what happens when you write a letter to the editor of a newspaper, although the wording by SBS is poor.

What they're intending is they have the right to publish or not, republish, edit etc and even charge money for such activities and you have no claim. What the clumsy usage of "become the property" implies is that you can't use your own words elsewhere.

What they should be saying IMO is that you grant them a permanent, universal non-exclusive license to republish, with or without editing, for no money in return. It might be nice for a public broadcaster to commit to acknowledging the author etc too.

Stil


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