Hi Ilona,
Mike Beltzner here, Head of Product for Wattpad. We’ve got it on our list to revise our Terms of Service to make it both more protective of authorship rights as well as easier to read and understand. The seeming contradiction on our terms of service is due to the fact that they must be written to protect our authors as well as ourselves. Since we both require written permission to redistribute user submissions, but also codify that authors retain ownership of the material, what we’re saying is: “You can’t go reposting any user submissions except for the ones you own without our permission.”
I’d be happy to discuss further with you – just drop me a line at mike at wattpad dot com.
I am terribly impressed and I’m going to email Mike and let you know how it will turn out.
Who would dare to own something without their permission….
I’ve seen it on Amazon a couple of times. One of the authors I know had her free book stolen and republished by some person who was making money off of it. Said author was livid her free work was taken and making money for someone else. It never fails to disappointment how unethical some people behave.
Amazon did remove the stolen work immediately. The money was not given to original author. No clue of the people who bought it were reimbursed.
At least that was only a short story. In the last year, I saw an entire paranormal trilogy stolen. Yes, hundred of pages of work stolen and republished under the thief’s name. When confronted, the thief still insisted it was their own work …despite the proof. The audacity of some people is confounding for me at times.
lacrimsonfemme recently posted..Review: Different Loving: A Complete Exploration of the World of Sexual Dominance and Submission
I read that as Sv making a joke about the way the sentence was phrased rather than being incredulous that people would try to steal other people’s work.
Oops. *chagrin* I’m still flabbergasted when people steal stuff though.
lacrimsonfemme recently posted..Review: Different Loving: A Complete Exploration of the World of Sexual Dominance and Submission
Yeah, I could have phrased that better. In my defense, I hadn’t had my morning coffee when I replied to Ilona
Yes, you could have phrased it better, but look, I was laughing, so you made my day a little brighter.
I guess that is certainly one reading of that language, but since the contract language is so vague they could easily argue something else if it came to a court case.
Good luck with this Ilona, seems like an interesting project you’re working on.
Bastard recently posted..Interview with Jenn Bennett – author of the Arcadia Bell series
This is just proof in action that customer service is still HUGE in making an impact for businesses. To begin with, fuzzy TOS and a blog post by a best-selling author, could have steered many people away from using this service. But after an inquiry, and a polite response, now I for one am willing to look into this service. Not only is it a service that appears to solve a problem I have, it has friendly and intelligent people who work there and are timely in responding. More than anything else, a responsive and informed customer service person will win my business. Plus I’m ten times more likely to recommend to others if I’ve had an interaction that was pleasant.
I agree 100%! My hat is off to Mike Beltzner, including his amusing coffee deprived word choice. I look forward to seeing how this develops.
Miss Bliss recently posted..9/11/12
You know, exactly what I was going to say. I’d've stuck with a +1 on the comment – but like B-Ster, I am now willing to consider Wattpad just because of the speed of their response to Ilona’s tweet. I’m actually the target audience, looking to move out of my lil tumblr, and find a different way to host my website (the by-itself was not a fun adventure).
Nineran recently posted..Kelp|ocean nails (Taken with Instagram)
I think this is evidence of the evolution of consumer service and self-regulation by companies. Just look at what even mega-corporations like airlines do when customers take to Twitter to complain about a specific problem or service?
More than ever they’re doing what they can to keep customers happy, and I think it’s in large part to the close relationships that can develop between company and consumer. With instantaneous feedback and response, they can highlight problems and fix them immediately.
If they confuse you enough, they can get you to agree with anything.