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Comment by jarrett | Hacker News Reader

What are Huffington Post's intellectual property terms? That could be a big distinction between Huffington Post and HN.

On HN, nobody signs over any IP, nor does the copyright holder necessarily grant a license of any sort. (If you doubt that, consider the fact that I can submit anyone's URL to HN. So submitters aren't assumed to have any authority over the IP.)

With periodicals, though, there usually is a contract with writers where rights are assigned to the publisher. Maybe the copyright, maybe just a license. There's usually something along those lines.

So the difference between HN and such periodicals (which may or may not include HuffPo) is the difference between merely sharing a link and signing over IP rights.

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"With periodicals, though, there usually is a contract with writers where rights are assigned to the publisher. Maybe the copyright, maybe just a license. There's usually something along those lines."

Publications usually allow the writer to retain IP ownership, but with an exclusive license granted to the publication for a certain period of time. For instance, "Joe Writer agrees to license to PublicationMagazine the exclusive worldwide rights to the work for a period of N days." Depending on the contract, many publications will also want the right to sublicense or syndicate the work during their license period, but will compensate the writer X% of syndication revenues.

I've never written for HuffPo, and I have no idea how their process works. I do, however, think it's a raw deal for any writer to contribute for free on an ongoing basis to a successful, for-profit publication. Not that there's anything illegal or immoral about that, per se. It's just that the writer is selling his time and product very short. Plenty of successful, respectable publications will pay a writer for his work. It won't be much; journalism isn't exactly renowned as a path to material riches. But at least it'll be something.

With HuffPo, you retain ownership of your work and are free to publish it anywhere else.

Good to know. In that case, probably the biggest distinction between HuffPo and HN is that HuffPo displays the content on their own site. For some writers, that might be a plus. For others, it might be a minus.

I've heard some professional writers say you should rarely or ever publish anything (e.g. a blog post) without remuneration. Not because it's wrong to do so, but because they consider it bad business. If they're right, I don't know if that should affect our judgment of a publisher who actively solicits unpaid submissions. Maybe the writers are undervaluing themselves, but then maybe the publisher isn't to blame for that.

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