fitzroyalty

News Ltd is rumoured to be planning a massive increase in the use of unpaid journalists for its proposed new Australian site with the working title ‘The Punch’. They already have the most regressive and insulting terms and conditions for user generated content submissions on their local newspaper websites. They specifically aim to strip contributors of their moral rights as well as their intellectual property rights and copyright.

They’re doing something similar in the US, where Fox News (also owned by News) is planning to exploit the user generated content from MySpace (also owned by News). The Age reports that:

MySpace on Monday invited its members to become volunteer “uReporters” by supplying news pictures or videos for use at the social networking website and Fox News network.

Fox citizen journalism service MySpace uReport went live online at www.myspace.com/ureport.

MySpace users can upload pictures or videos, not written stories, to uReport. Fox has editorial control of uReport pages and can use submitted content at its cable news channel or its foxnews.com website.

Where’s the incentive to participate? There isn’t one. The disdain for social media contributors and the transparent desire to exploit them is evident in the blatantly ignorant boasting of the News suits:

“Fox News has created a great asset with the uReport service,” Fox News chief executive officer Roger Ailes said in a release.

“The MySpace uReport community presents an extraordinary opportunity to expand our network of citizen journalists.”

No mention of the ‘opportunity’ for the participants. They don’t even exist in his mind. The opportunity is entirely for the corporation to exploit the community.

These schemes are becoming common. Fairfax are planning something similar in asking actors to perform for no pay in crime reconstruction videos to be used on Fairfax news websites. The ABC is just as bad in that it fails to guarantee attribution of user submitted content.

I posed a simple question more than a year ago for all media businesses moving towards the use of user generated content and social media: why should I (as a blogger or citizen journalist) help you build your media empire? I’ve not heard a single coherent answer. I think this is because there isn’t one…

The media suits are on their knees and they know it. They know the future of media is based on community. They only know how to exploit, so they are naturally planning to exploit the community. Don’t let them. Limit what you post to Myspace and Facebook. Ignore their invitations to participate in their pathetic new sites. Deny them content.

Liberate yourself from corporate media control. Publish your content on your own platform and set your own terms and conditions for its reuse. Use a non-commercial creative commons copyright license. You are the media now.

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Other posts you may find relevant and interesting

• The Melbourne Leader / where I live – how not to do social media, 13 December 2008
• I fought Formula 1 Management and I won, 27 April 2009
• how not to do social media – the ABC’s user generated content terms and conditions are a joke, 18 April 2009
• customers are the social media experts, 21 May 2008
• The ABC, media and community, 10 August 2009

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 26th, 2009 at 12:24 pm and is filed under business, customer service, information technology, intellectual property, media, misanthropy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.