Blogburst

I was contacted yesterday by someone from a company called Pluck, based in Texas. They are expanding their Blogburst product into the UK, Europe and Asia. Using the blog’s RSS feed, content is syndicated into the websites of large news sites, such as Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, USAToday, and Reuters. I was being invited to join (it’s invite only, apparently) – the usual ego pampering stuff. I don’t respond readily to attempts to flatter me and not having heard about this service before as well as being a deeply cynical individual (must be something to do with growing older), I thought I’d do a bit of research.

If you are a blogger who is keen on getting more exposure, then you may well be interested – and, to be fair to Pluck, these are still early days and the product is relatively new (about a year or so since the launch in the USA). On the downside, some of the early criticisms still stand.

The first is remuneration. The business model used by Pluck consists of on-selling of content to their clients. The client sites are monetised using advertising. At first, bloggers were merely expected to be satisfied with the increased exposure. Blogburst now has a ranking system which means that bloggers can be paid anything from around $50 – $1500 depending on performance. So, if you go for it, you may get paid. But then, you may not. This, from the licensing agreement:

You may be compensated for the Works that you have contributed subject to Pluck’s then-current policies. However, you acknowledge and agree that Pluck is not obligated to compensate you, you are not entering into this Agreement with the expectation of any payment…

Still, you might get to be famous for five minutes. Perhaps the greatest caveat is this, also in the licensing agreement:

Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, you grant to Pluck and its affiliates a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, license to reproduce, distribute, make derivative works of, perform, display and disclose the Work (and derivative works thereof) for the purposes of (a) adapting the Work to fit within Publisher web sites without substantially changing its original meaning, and (b) distributing the Work (and derivative works thereof) to Publisher electronic web sites

Think very carefully before you agree to this. As Gary Farber points out, no professional would sign away their intellectual property rights in this manner and I certainly will not.

I would never sign a “perpetual license” without a vast amount of compensation. I would be willing to grant a limited term license under various more normal terms and limitations, and provisions for reversion of rights, in return for something resembling a standard royalty. As it is, you are asking for an extraordinary grant of rights, in return for essentially nothing, I’m afraid. Not withstanding the unusual “non-exclusive” language. But “royalty-free, perpetual” are words I have a problem with.

Having fallen foul of contract law some years ago, I am extremely wary about what I agree to. Since Gary wrote this, the “perpetual” clause appears to have been dropped. However, it still asks me to sign away far too much. When I write professionally, I issue an invoice upon publication. My current going rate for a 1,500 word article is £100. I am not prepared to write professionally for nothing or the possibility that I may be recompensed. Nor am I prepared to sign away my rights to the material. What I write here is not written for commercial use anyway; it is my sounding board. If people want to read it and join in the discussion, that’s a bonus but I don’t want to be constrained by any licensing agreements.

However, negative points aside, this is a developing field. If more exposure is your thing and you are prepared to sign up to the licensing agreement, then good luck to you; just think very carefully about those terms and conditions and be aware of what you are agreeing to.

Don’t get the impression that I think this is necessarily a bad idea; quite the opposite, it tends to demonstrate that we are being taken seriously. I am simply not prepared to sign up to the agreement and, frankly, I don’t particularly want this place to become commercialised.

To summarise;

• The big media publishers get access to bloggers’ content and make advertising revenue from it.
• Pluck makes a profit by selling bloggers’ content to the big media people.
• Bloggers get… Well, they might get some money. Otherwise they get their egos stroked.

Um… Fuck that!

Oh, yeah, there is also one other caveat:

Requirements for acceptance into the BlogBurst network:

• At least weekly posting
• Family-friendly language and content
• Distinct, intelligent writing style

I can manage two out of three…

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More reading:

Medgadget

Mediashift

Online Journalism

Plagiarism Today

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Update: I came across this from Blue Cat:

In the end I ran it past my attorney and web-specialist, who said: “OK, basically they want to sell your content to the newspapers.  You get nothing but the pleasure of seeing your blog content on the San Francisco Chronicle’s website.  Meanwhile, BlogBurst gets paid money by the SF Chronicle for providing it with stuff people want to read, i.e. your blog.  And the SF Chronicle makes money by putting ads around it.  Ooh, it’s like TOTAL EXPLOITATION. Tell them to fuck off.”

Thanks attorney. Sorry Eric.

I didn’t do the attorney thing, but came to the same conclusion…