Have you contacted anyone at National Geographic? There is a good chance they made a mistake and this could be easily fixed.
Ask HN: Is Medium legally an online blog?
21–22 of 22 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is Medium legally an online blog?
#22Hey Borui! That sucks, sorry to hear. A couple of suggestions: 1. Check with lawyer. 2. Review your contract for the license. Specifically if you define where your blog resides. Medium also clearly states "You’re responsible for the content you submit to Medium and assume all risks associated with it, including anyone else’s reliance on its accuracy, or claims relating to intellectual property or other legal rights.…
More update.
Our lawyer gave us a go on the counter-notice. But this has started to distract me away so we're more likely to resolve it by licensing additional images from NG. The argument was that if the article is hosted on Medium, we should have disclosed this when sining the contract - otherwise it is considered deceiving because Medium is a large distribution platform as compared to an "online blog", although we believe online blog could also be large too. So basically, they would have priced the contract differently (higher) if they knew the article will be hosted on Medium : ).