Who Owns Your Comments?

guest post by David Cushman

I think I upset Jeff Jarvis.

I didn’t mean to. No offence meant Jeff… attention is love…

Jeff is currently writing a book. I’m sure it’ll be fabulous. In fact I’d go so far as to suggest you go ahead and pre-order it safe in the knowledge you’ll get some brilliant insights and a cracking read. He’s a great thinker and the book is long overdue.

But yesterday a brief exchange of tweets got me thinking about the value of contributions, how value is shared in collaborations, and being clear about who gets what.

jeffjarvis I just wrote a chapter out of the book (the one on insurance) almost completely from blog comments. The value of collaboration! Thanks.

(Updated: Link to Jeff’s original post)

davidcushman @jeffjarvis do u have a plan to share the proceeds and were commentors aware of this when posting?

jeffjarvis: @davidcushman I said it was for the book and I’m grateful for the help. I am also interviewing people and quoting docs and articles. C’mon.

and before I could respond again…

jeffjarvis: @davidcushman Do your magazines pay everyone you quote? Jeesh.

A point well made. Of course we don’t. Not about to pay you for those tweets right now, either Jeff.

But if you write an article for us, we do pay you. I’m not sure where a comment contributed to a blogpost (or a tweet for that matter) sits between those but maybe it’s not quite as black or white as Jeff suggests. Readers letters regularly win prizes, after all.

Small matter – the contributors whose thoughts get quoted in Jeff’s book will, I’m sure, regard the little bit of fame this bestows as payment or prize enough.

Which is why I responded with:

davidcushman @jeffjarvis hey i only asked? u were transparent so i’m fine with that and wud actually be supportive. chill tiger

To be fair, my question had been provocative… but not altogether unreasonable. It’s not so long since a generation of content creators got not a little huffy about youtube’s founders making a pile of cash out of all those UGC video contributions in the sale to google.

So Jeff’s clarification that he’d been clear about the terms and conditions of those contributing to that particular collaboration was exactly the answer I was hoping to hear.

More importantly, the conversation raised an interesting question for me.

For a start; I have no terms and conditions relating to what might or might not be done with comments posted on my blog (I wonder how many of us do?).

Nothing states that your contributions may be taken, edited and republished anywhere I want, for my own or anyone else’s financial gain. For all time.

Is it simply trust, and an expectation of generosity among bloggers that makes us comfortable with this while big media companies have to employ lawyers to ensure T&Cs give them the all clear to re-use UGC to their heart’s content? For example

Or as youtube once put it with tongue firmly in cheek:

What is the distinction that matters here?

Who owns your comments and is it important for small media (us bloggers) to be as transparent as big media (like company I work for)?

If not, why not?