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I'm concerned with the move that FreeCodeCamp just pulled by leaving Medium

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Re: I'm concerned with the move that FreeCodeCamp just pulled by leaving Medium

#11
post #4
post #3

"Publications on Medium are bound by the Medium Terms of Service, and they have no right to your content that you do not explicitly grant them. That includes exporting, copying, or reposting your content to any website that is not Medium.com" "You own the rights to the content you create and post on Medium" Wait what? If it's my content and I own the rights, I can repost it wherever I wish.

Yes, you can post it wherever you wish. A third party publication on Medium, however, cannot do so without your consent.

Ah, got it, I wasn't aware of this distinction.

Re: I'm concerned with the move that FreeCodeCamp just pulled by leaving Medium

#13
post #3

"Publications on Medium are bound by the Medium Terms of Service, and they have no right to your content that you do not explicitly grant them. That includes exporting, copying, or reposting your content to any website that is not Medium.com" "You own the rights to the content you create and post on Medium" Wait what? If it's my content and I own the rights, I can repost it wherever I wish.

The publications have no right of export of content they display that you posted yourself, unless you declared otherwise to the publication. If you, the same legal entity, are both poster and republisher, then Medium’s statement is both true and irrelevant to you, as you retain the right of export that they guarantee is the poster’s to exercise.

Yep, if FreeCodeCamp secured the right to reproduce the content elsewhere everything is fine, but if they didn't they probably shouldn't have stood up the new site with an export of the content.

Many publications that pay for content secure the perpetual right to publish the content and usually some expiring right to exclusive publishing of the content and the writers themselves retain copyright. Not sure if FreeCodeCamp did this.

Re: I'm concerned with the move that FreeCodeCamp just pulled by leaving Medium

#14

On an unrelated note, I really wish that Medium hadn't gone to a pay-after-three model like everyone else- not only can I not afford it, it feels counter-intuitive. To me, Medium is a place where budding bloggers, industry professionals, etc. can get a start or work on building up and out their careers and influence - and it doesn't make sense to say "you have to spend money to give these people attention", especiall…

What monetization model would you suggest? The pay after three model only applies when the authors opt-in, and they earn a share of the profits.

Re: I'm concerned with the move that FreeCodeCamp just pulled by leaving Medium

#15
Please post here if you file a DMCA claim against them for misuse of your content without your permission. Their contact information is in their terms of service (team@freecodecamp.org) and their public non-profit filing (1), and they declare themselves subject to US Law.

They are a nonprofit, so they have the option of offering each author a tax deduction as payment for content. If you have entered into any rights deal with them directly, you may not have standing to make a DMCA claim; take care not to knowingly do so under such circumstances, as that is likely a crime under US federal law.

Their hosting provider will likely also want to be notified of your DMCA claim, as they may be in violation of contractual agreements signed for their hosting.

(1) https://s3.amazonaws.com/freecodecamp/Free+Code+Camp+Inc+IRS...

Re: I'm concerned with the move that FreeCodeCamp just pulled by leaving Medium

#18

Does medium even provide any valuable content? Every time I've been there's it's been nothing but people who are total amateurs talking out of their ass as tho they're experts.

There's also seemingly useful articles that end up being content marketing!

Re: I'm concerned with the move that FreeCodeCamp just pulled by leaving Medium

#19
One thing mentioned in Ben’s post that’s worth talking about explicitly: if you add a post to Medium using their import feature, Medium will set the canonical URL to your original URL. This meant that when if you imported a post from your personal blog and submitted it to FreeCodeCamp, you’d get a big SEO benefit: your post was shared on one of the biggest Medium publications, but any backlinks and ranking boosts would apply back to your original post, on your website.

As part of this migration, FreeCodeCamp has removed canonical URLs from submitted posts - your original post is now competing with freecodecamp.org, and Google (and other search engines) is going to do a duplicate content check. Considering that FCC is in the top 2000 sites in the world according to Alexa[1], there’s a _strong_ chance your site will be penalized. This is a big deal for authors.

[1]: https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/freecodecamp.org

Re: I'm concerned with the move that FreeCodeCamp just pulled by leaving Medium

#20

On an unrelated note, I really wish that Medium hadn't gone to a pay-after-three model like everyone else- not only can I not afford it, it feels counter-intuitive. To me, Medium is a place where budding bloggers, industry professionals, etc. can get a start or work on building up and out their careers and influence - and it doesn't make sense to say "you have to spend money to give these people attention", especiall…

What monetization model would you suggest? The pay after three model only applies when the authors opt-in, and they earn a share of the profits.

What ever happened to writing for free? I don’t want everyone to get paid for posts. It should be rewarded based on merit.
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