Suggested reading: How The Health Blogosphere Was Scammed.
Wellsphere’s Intellectual Property Rights
When you post your own copyrightable content on the Website or give Wellsphere permission to post your copyrightable content on the Website, you retain ownership of any copyright you claim to your submitted content. However, by posting your content or giving Wellsphere permission to post your content you automatically grant Wellsphere a royalty-free, paid-up, non-exclusive, worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual license to (i) use, make, sell, offer to sell, have made, and further sublicense any such User Materials, and (ii) reproduce, distribute, create derivative works of, publicly perform and publicly display the User Materials in any medium or format, whether now known or later developed[.]
HealthCentral’s Intellectual Property Rights
We do not claim a copyright in the text, files, images, photos, works of authorship or other materials that you post on the Site, either as the host or a visitor (collectively Member Content). After posting Member Content to the Site, you shall continue to retain ownership of such Member Content.…By posting Member Content to the Site, you thereby grant us a perpetual, royalty-free, worldwide, fully paid up and irrevocable right and license to use, reproduce, modify, publicly display, transmit, and sublicense, such Member Content. Without this limited license, we would not be able to include Member Content in the Site. This license is non-exclusive.
Well it seems that any Wellsphere–participating blogger must exercise an affirmative act of claiming any reserved rights, else the blogger waives all rights to the original work irrevocably and perpetually. Kudos to HealthCentral for their policy. Interesting concept of “perpetually,” even the U.S. Constitution does not grant perpetual exclusive rights.
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
I suspect the “later developed” may have something to do with bootstrapping, in borrowed boots, page-hits for due diligence.
If you are concerned with this issue, you are encouraged to participate in the discussion occurring on Twitter. Also, consider claiming reserved rights—Creative Commons is a good place to start.
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