More legal stuff to be scared of...

The more I see how things are going in the "big" publishing world and on the web -- I mean the slimy rights-grabbing sleaze fest -- the happier I am that (A) I had a simple limited-term contract for my first book, which is now long expired thank FSM and the publisher is out of business anyway; and (B) I'm not signing any more contracts for publishing stuff. Fergeddit; I'll publish it myself, thank you. I can get away with the do-it-yourself approach because, first off, I'm not trying to make a living at it. If you're trying to make a living at your art, you should start setting aside money now to pay your lawyer if you're ever planning on signing a contract with anyone. And you should also be looking at the terms of service agreements anywhere you're posting your stuff, even if it's only supposedly for your own use.

If you're looking at entering into any contracts with publishers, you should be very careful. Here are some interesting blogs...

Someplace called Dropbox, apparently a "cloud" thing that people seem to like, recently changed their terms of service to grab rights they probably shouldn't have over "your stuff" if you put it up on their servers. Here's a blog about that:

Put it in the Cloud? Are You Nuts?

How about another example... Let's go check clause 9.4 of the "Google Docs" terms of service www.google.com/accounts/TOS?hl… which (as of today) says: Google acknowledges and agrees that it obtains no right, title or interest from you (or your licensors) under these Terms in or to any Content that you submit, post, transmit or display on, or through, the Services and so forth... But if you read further down to clause 11 it says: By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services... Hmmm. In other words, they can do pretty much whatever they like with content that you post into a Google Doc without paying you anything. And once you've put a document up there, they can do it in perpetuity. Now, go look at Lulu.com's terms of service, clause 11: www.lulu.com/about/terms_of_us… They explicitly say their rights are exclusive of Content provided by third parties, which is owned by the licensors of such Content. See the difference?

Another interesting blog, pointed to by the one above, is this interesting piece about Peggy Lee:

Principles of Contracts: Everybody Knows Peggy Lee (or should)

and a follow-on from that, which tells you all about saying "no":

Principles of Contracts: Embrace Your Inner 2 Year-Old

And of course, I'm not a lawyer and this isn't advice, I'm just blabbing to myself.