One of the article that was once front page of HN https://medium.com/@pixelmagazine/where-are-chernobyl-s-children-a-photojournalist-s-honest-project-in-the-age-of-disaster-tourism-4cd333ab80c7 was taken down in 48 hours by a DCMA notice from National Geographic, clamming "The license for Gerd's two images does not permit use on the publishing platform Medium, and was not part of our negotiation or contract. ", although we purchased proper license for "One-time, Non-exclusive rights to use image within the Gerd Ludwig interview piece for Pixel Magazine online blog.". We spend lots of energy conducting interview and writing the article. What should we do?
Ask HN: Is Medium legally an online blog?
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Re: Ask HN: Is Medium legally an online blog?
#2sounds like they expected you to publish it on a domain Pixel Magazine controls. Medium is more like a social platform.
Re: Ask HN: Is Medium legally an online blog?
#3sounds like they expected you to publish it on a domain Pixel Magazine controls. Medium is more like a social platform.
Whatever they expected... What is IN THE CONTRACT? I think this is the most important part. Does it specify one medium, or allows to use it in the article, wherever it is published?
Re: Ask HN: Is Medium legally an online blog?
#4sounds like they expected you to publish it on a domain Pixel Magazine controls. Medium is more like a social platform.
There are one-off posts on Medium, I don't see the significant difference between a Publication and a blog on Blogger or Wordpress.com. Controlling the domain is definitively not required to have a blog.
Re: Ask HN: Is Medium legally an online blog?
#5[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Is Medium legally an online blog?
#6You say your contract said "for Pixel Magazine online blog" specifically. So maybe it's not just a question of whether Medium is a blog, but whether that publication was on the "Pixel magazine online blog."
But none of us are lawyers, we can't say. There is no official legal definition of 'a blog' so far as I know.
Re: Ask HN: Is Medium legally an online blog?
#7You talk to a lawyer (IANAL).
It does look at first glance however that your actual landing page links to your Medium page as your Blog (you treat G+ as a separate link). In this case, I would have a lawyer explain to them that you host your blog on Medium because that's where the cool kids are now (having moved on from tumblr of course).
So yeah, if you pixelmagazine.tumblr.com, they still might have filed a takedown but you'd still be right. Next time though, specify the URL to your blog in the contract (there should be a definition for the term Pixel Magazine blog, particularly since that's not your company's name!).
Re: Ask HN: Is Medium legally an online blog?
#8They probably were looking for more prominent "Pixel Magazine online blog" branding on the page. Medium doesn't really highlight the fact that you seem to be hosting said blog on their site, as opposed to it just being some random yahoo's article.
Re: Ask HN: Is Medium legally an online blog?
#9So everyone else doesn't have to find it: the Pixel Magazine blog is for an app (company?) called polarr at polarr.co.
Re: Ask HN: Is Medium legally an online blog?
#10sounds like they expected you to publish it on a domain Pixel Magazine controls. Medium is more like a social platform.
There are one-off posts on Medium, I don't see the significant difference between a Publication and a blog on Blogger or Wordpress.com. Controlling the domain is definitively not required to have a blog.
Perhaps that publishing on Medium grants Medium (through some TOS terms) the right to republish and reuse anything published there (nominally for creating indexes and recommendations, but the legalese says what it says.)