{"id":2239,"date":"2007-11-19T21:36:58","date_gmt":"2007-11-20T04:36:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=2239"},"modified":"2007-11-19T21:36:58","modified_gmt":"2007-11-20T04:36:58","slug":"activeraincom-members-own-content-but-cant-profit-from-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2239\/activeraincom-members-own-content-but-cant-profit-from-it\/","title":{"rendered":"ActiveRain.com: Members Own Content But Can’t Profit From It"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do members REALLY own the content on Active Rain?<\/p>\n

I asked that question some 13-14 months ago, wondering whether the hours I invested would be worthwhile. I was satisfied with the explanation that the content was, indeed, the members’ property.<\/p>\n

Move.com attempted to buy Active Rain, it balked, and conversations about a future revenue model led the idea of syndicating the user content to the mainstream media. Again, the question of who owns the content arose- the answer was identical to the 2006 answer; the members own their content<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Justin Smith (aka Damion Foxworthy) wrote a satirical post, which won the People’s Choice Award, in the Odysseus Medal competition<\/a>, about “selling” his Active Rain profile. Justin, through diligent weblogging and contribution to the community, has amassed some 100,000 points on Active Rain. The entry was cross-posted on Active Rain<\/a> and generated an overwhelming response from the membership in the comments section. As usual, I “read too much into” this comment from Top Rainmaker, Jon Washburn<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

Great post Justin,<\/em><\/p>\n

I sat reading it thinking, “Great, how should I handle this. I probably have to zero out the points on this profile now. But man, whoever bought Justin’s blog is going to be pissed.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think you all are right and we need to think through this issue and put some type of formal policy in place.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Did you catch that?<\/strong> He said that he would “probably have to zero out the profile”. This means that while Justin has ownership of the points, he has no right to transfer them. The points were a by-product of the contributed content. Ergo, the content is not really “owned” by the members, in the purest definition of the word ownership<\/a> (the content can’t be transferred).<\/p>\n

The policy being considered strips the most important right of “ownership” from the members and releases it to the Company. While the Company can lease the content to a third-party news source, for the implied quid pro quo of SEO, the only profiting that will be done will be by the Company.<\/p>\n

I’m okay with that, too. <\/strong> I’m Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do members REALLY own the content on Active Rain? I asked that question some 13-14 months ago, wondering whether the hours I invested would be worthwhile. I was satisfied with the explanation that the content was, indeed, the members’ property. Move.com attempted to buy Active Rain, it balked, and conversations about a future revenue model […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,19,23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2239","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-blogging","7":"category-technology","8":"category-the-odysseus-medal","10":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2235,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2235\/the-odysseus-medal-competition-voting-for-the-peoples-choice-award-is-open-7\/","url_meta":{"origin":2239,"position":0},"title":"The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open","author":"Greg Swann","date":"November 18, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Eighteen nominees this week. I had a bunch of posts from Active Rain, and, while I didn't pick any this week for the short list, I'd like to encourage y'all to continue to enter. There is some good stuff over there that I would not see otherwise. Vote for the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2013,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2013\/the-odysseus-medal-competition-voting-for-the-peoples-choice-award-is-open\/","url_meta":{"origin":2239,"position":1},"title":"The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open","author":"Greg Swann","date":"October 7, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Redfin's financial underbelly, the top-bazillion-bloggers and leftovers from last week's ActiveRain thunderstorm. These are just some of the topics addressed in this week's Odysseus Medal competition. Vote for the People's Choice Award here. You can use the voting interface to see each nominated post, so comparison is easy. Voting runs\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2261,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2261\/the-odysseus-medal-competition-voting-for-the-peoples-choice-award-is-open-8\/","url_meta":{"origin":2239,"position":2},"title":"The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open","author":"Greg Swann","date":"November 25, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Twenty-five nominees. I confess that it's faster for me on Sunday if I'm not too picky, but this week saw a surplus of very good posts. Vote for the People's Choice Award here. You can use the voting interface to see each nominated post, so comparison is easy. Please don't\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2111,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2111\/the-odysseus-medal-competition-voting-for-the-peoples-choice-award-is-open-4\/","url_meta":{"origin":2239,"position":3},"title":"The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open","author":"Greg Swann","date":"October 28, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"A dozen nominees again, which is boiling down to one entry out of five. Already you're looking at what I view as the cream of this week's crop. We are slaves to the news, of course. This week's fires in Southern California dominated our attention. Congress seems desperate to do\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1940,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1940\/the-odysseus-medal-propagating-better-ideas-in-real-estate-by-celebrating-better-ideas-in-real-estate\/","url_meta":{"origin":2239,"position":4},"title":"The Odysseus Medal: Propagating better ideas in real estate by celebrating better ideas in real estate","author":"Greg Swann","date":"September 17, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"This is probably not much of a secret, but I really love ideas. I think the argument that smart people can improve the NAR cartel from the inside is absurd, but the instant form of the claim -- that I could advance Realtors' use of technology by wasting my time\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1082,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1082\/the-odysseus-medal-inmans-real-estate-weblogging-coverage\/","url_meta":{"origin":2239,"position":5},"title":"The Odysseus Medal: Inman’s real estate weblogging coverage","author":"Greg Swann","date":"February 26, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"(I was going to award The Cheez-Whiz Prize to Google's applications suite, but I decided not to bother. I do think it's silly to go from centralized processing to distributed processing and then back to centralized processing, but I can understand why people might do just about anything to get\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}