This just makes me think: why in the world would any one want to become a writer these days? There isn't much money in it, unless you get lucky and hit it big. I understanding having a passion, but this is one passion that should be relegated to hobby time. Am I wrong on this? I'm just not seeing the economic viability of writing sentences and having people (whether readers or advertisers) paying you proportionate to the amount of work you put in.
AOL Exposed: A Former AOL Employee Speaks Out
11–20 of 124 posts
Re: AOL Exposed: A Former AOL Employee Speaks Out
#12"AOL paid us as “independent contractors," AOL is treading a fine, fine line there. The IRS defines an independent contractor as: "The general rule is that an individual is an independent contractor if the payer has the right to control or direct only the result of the work and not what will be done and how it will be done." This is a notoriously ambiguous definition but with AOL's rigorous guidelines, deadlines, and…
That is not the only criteria.
See this comment:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2666507
The other issue is, as a contractor, the contractor retains all copyrights to the material created. Work for hire does not apply in this instance.
He could send a DMCA takedown notice and have all of his articles removed, or organize all the other unemployed writers and coordinate a massive DMCA takedown letter writing campaign.
Re: AOL Exposed: A Former AOL Employee Speaks Out
#13It's a sad sad story. I love reading great content and I never had problems paying for great content.
I've been a subscriber to paid magazines/papers and I'll continue to be one to digital ones.
But I guess my kind is rare and of course the majority always wins.
Re: AOL Exposed: A Former AOL Employee Speaks Out
#14Not just AOL, broadcast media, like mainstream news channels seem to work that way too as far as buzzwords and what topics to cover.
Like you'd never know the US was in three wars or about to default on the deficit the past couple of weeks. Only PBS was mostly immune and BBC World.
Re: AOL Exposed: A Former AOL Employee Speaks Out
#15"AOL paid us as “independent contractors," AOL is treading a fine, fine line there. The IRS defines an independent contractor as: "The general rule is that an individual is an independent contractor if the payer has the right to control or direct only the result of the work and not what will be done and how it will be done." This is a notoriously ambiguous definition but with AOL's rigorous guidelines, deadlines, and…
That is not the only criteria. See this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2666507 The other issue is, as a contractor, the contractor retains all copyrights to the material created. Work for hire does not apply in this instance. He could send a DMCA takedown notice and have all of his articles removed, or organize all the other unemployed writers and coordinate a massive DMCA takedown letter writing campai…
That's the default, but I'm pretty sure the contract can say AOL gets the copyright.
Re: AOL Exposed: A Former AOL Employee Speaks Out
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is not the only criteria. See this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2666507 The other issue is, as a contractor, the contractor retains all copyrights to the material created. Work for hire does not apply in this instance. He could send a DMCA takedown notice and have all of his articles removed, or organize all the other unemployed writers and coordinate a massive DMCA takedown letter writing campai…
That's the default, but I'm pretty sure the contract can say AOL gets the copyright.
The content creator licenses the content. Not a "get".
17 U.S.C. § 101
A "work made for hire" is— (1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or (2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire.
Collective or supplementary work? Not sure.
Re: AOL Exposed: A Former AOL Employee Speaks Out
#17This just makes me think: why in the world would any one want to become a writer these days? There isn't much money in it, unless you get lucky and hit it big. I understanding having a passion, but this is one passion that should be relegated to hobby time. Am I wrong on this? I'm just not seeing the economic viability of writing sentences and having people (whether readers or advertisers) paying you proportionate to…
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Re: AOL Exposed: A Former AOL Employee Speaks Out
#18"AOL paid us as “independent contractors," AOL is treading a fine, fine line there. The IRS defines an independent contractor as: "The general rule is that an individual is an independent contractor if the payer has the right to control or direct only the result of the work and not what will be done and how it will be done." This is a notoriously ambiguous definition but with AOL's rigorous guidelines, deadlines, and…
That is not the only criteria. See this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2666507 The other issue is, as a contractor, the contractor retains all copyrights to the material created. Work for hire does not apply in this instance. He could send a DMCA takedown notice and have all of his articles removed, or organize all the other unemployed writers and coordinate a massive DMCA takedown letter writing campai…
It's not the case that contractors are guaranteed copyright to their work; in fact, the opposite is more common. The issue of copyright doesn't come up in the IRS criteria for contractor vs. employee.
Re: AOL Exposed: A Former AOL Employee Speaks Out
#19This just makes me think: why in the world would any one want to become a writer these days? There isn't much money in it, unless you get lucky and hit it big. I understanding having a passion, but this is one passion that should be relegated to hobby time. Am I wrong on this? I'm just not seeing the economic viability of writing sentences and having people (whether readers or advertisers) paying you proportionate to…
Being a writer has never been a way to get rich. All those movies about newspaper journalists are not filled with a bunch of wealthy writers. They are grinding it out, for the most part, and they always have.
Re: AOL Exposed: A Former AOL Employee Speaks Out
#20The OP talks about how in the age where there are more readers than ever, writers are undervalued. What the OP fails to mention is the quality of readers and writers. A reader who consumes 100,000 pages worth of Facebook statuses is not really much of a reader. Historically, reading was used as a means to communicate ideas. Think Machiavelli, Aristotle, Nietzsche. Now it is used for communicating a much larger scope of information: "Lady Gaga Pantless in Paris". You cannot compare a writer that writes the Illiad and a writer that writes TV Show reviews of shows they've never seen. They are not the same category.