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November 21, 2006
Bloggers: Give It Up For Fox
Last night I was watching our local Fox affiliate's 11pm news broadcast to see how they were covering the mess surrounding that OJ Simpson book, and at one point they plugged a feature on their website inviting the public to blog there. At first I was surprised, because I hadn't heard of a TV news website hosting blogs for the public. Blogs written by correspondents or contributors, perhaps, but not Jane Q. Citizen. It seemed too good to be true; there had to be a catch.
Ah, here it is, in their terms of use:
You agree that any content you post becomes the property of FIM [Fox Interactive Media]. You understand and agree that FIM and its parent and affiliated companies may use, publish, copy, sublicense, adapt, edit, distribute, publicly perform, display and delete the content you post as they see fit. This right will terminate at the time you remove such content from the Site. Notwithstanding the foregoing, a back-up or residual copy of the content posted by you to the Site may remain on the FIM servers after you have removed such content from the Site, and FIM retains the rights to those copies.If at any time you are not happy with the Forums or object to any material within the Forums, your sole remedy is to stop using them.
So that explains it. Feel free to blog for Fox - just be prepared to give away absolutely everything you write on the blog. I find it amazing people are falling for this when there are a gazillion free blogging tools out there, none of which strips away your rights to your own ideas. -andy
Posted by acarvin at November 21, 2006 9:24 AM
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