The CBC’s bad citizen contributor terms of use
In March I highlighted some of the problems with the terms & conditions for The Gazette's new hyperlocal citizen journalism website. One of my biggest concerns was the section requiring people to waive their moral rights in order to contribute to the site. Simply put, it's not a right that needs to be waived in order for The Gazette to be able publish user submissions.
Requiring citizen contributors to waive their moral rights sends the message that the site isn't about community or bringing people into the news process. It's just about grabbing as much free content as possible without having to compensate or offer any consideration to the people supplying said content. As I noted in my previous post, I'm sure The Gazette isn't planning to take submissions and then deny people credit. But making people waive their moral rights give the paper the right to do so, among other things. Unfortunately, the same can be said for the CBC's citizen contributor terms of use.
Yesterday on the great Inside The CBC blog Tod Maffin raised many of the same issues about the terms of use for the CBC's website. It seems as though large media organizations are adopting unfair practices when it comes to their potential use of user generated content. I understand that they need to be granted certain rights in order to be able to use the content. Totally necessary. But that doesn't mean you just take any and all rights you can think of. Tod highlights one particularly troublesome section from the CBC terms of use (emphasis mine):
By posting or uploading Submissions to the Web site, you grant CBC/Radio Canada a royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive, irrevocable, unrestricted, worldwide license to use, reproduce, store, adapt, translate, modify, make derivative works from, transmit, distribute, publicly perform or display such Submissions for any purpose; and to sublicense to third parties the unrestricted right to exercise any of the foregoing rights.
Translation: the CBC could take your photo and resell it someone else. You give, they take. And maybe make money selling your content. Maffin rightly slams the CBC for this (emphasis his):
I have a major stick up my butt about this one. If I send a photo or short video of a breaking news event to the CBC web site for the CBC to use freely on air and/or online, that’s one thing. But I certainly would feel cheated if the CBC turns around and resells the content to, say, CNN! (The Terms don’t specifically say any money would change hands, but there’s nothing that says it can’t.) Shouldn’t I get at least a cut, if not a say in the matter?
This is exploitative and unfair. Maffin also takes on the issue of waiving moral rights (italics his):
To be clear, if you waive those rights — which you do as soon as you submit anything to the CBC — the CBC can do what it wants with it, regardless of how it might affect your reputation.
Some might argue, in fact, that the CBC is in violation of section 14.1(2) of Canada’s Copyright Act by asking you to waive your rights “in favour of CBC.” In the Act, it says that “moral rights may not be assigned but may be waived in whole or in part.” I’m not a lawyer, but to me waiving my rights is waiving them. Kissing them goodbye. But if I waive my rights “in favour of the CBC,” it sure sounds like I’m specifically assigning those rights to the Mothercorp, which would be a clear violation of the Act.
I’ve asked the CBC law department for its interpretation of how “moral rights” are used in practice.
I look forward to the answer. And I look forward to the day when large media organizations stop treating citizen contributors as gullible free labor undeserving of any rights or fair consideration.
This is not the way to encourage citizen journalism.
Move along, nothing to see here
My father sent me this scan of an article published April 17 in my hometown paper, The Chronicle Herald. I'm not completely sure why it made me feel homesick, but perhaps it's because the headline portrays Halifax as the kind of place where someone can have their throat slit and it's not a murder.
I have no idea what happened with the case after this, but my Dad's observation was that policing in Halifax "is not at all like a CSI show." Dead body with its throat slit? Nah, doesn't look like foul play to me. Awesome.
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Hey there. Thanks for stopping by. I'm a freelance journalist and author in Montreal, Canada. I serve as an associate editor for PBS MediaShift, a website that reports on trends in new media and journalism. I edit RegretTheError.com and wrote a book of the same name. I'm also the co-author, with Michael Calce, of Mafiaboy: How I Cracked The Internet and Why It's Still Broken. Both books are listed to the right.
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