
Medium Opens Signups To All - aritraghosh007
http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/25/twitter-co-founder-evan-williams-blogging-platform-medium-opens-signups-to-all/
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UweSchmidt
From the terms of service:

[https://medium.com/p/9db0094a1e0f](https://medium.com/p/9db0094a1e0f)

"By furnishing your User Content to Medium, you give Medium a non-exclusive
worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable, transferable license to utilize all
copyright rights now in existence or that may arise in the future with respect
to your User Content, in any medium that now exists or may arise in the
future, as well as to do anything else that is reasonably appropriate to our
Service and its use of your User Content (including, but not limited to, use
of your name in association with your User Content to identify you as the
contributor). The license has no restriction as to the medium, dissemination
method, type of Service we may offer, or the type of systems or products that
may be used in conjunction with your User Content."

Anyone went into this fully conscious about this aspect? Do you feel it's
reasonable?

To be honest, at this point I think I'd rather pay for a service and keep
ownership.

~~~
shawndrost
How could anyone host your content on their servers without a license? How
could they link to your content from a widget if it wasn't transferable? Is
there a comparable TOS that you prefer?

"By submitting Content to Automattic for inclusion on your Website, you grant
Automattic a world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce,
modify, adapt and publish the Content solely for the purpose of displaying,
distributing and promoting your blog."

[http://en.wordpress.com/tos/](http://en.wordpress.com/tos/)

~~~
cfinke
_" The license has no restriction as to [...] type of systems or products that
may be used in conjunction with your User Content."_

vs.

 _" solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting your
blog."_

That's the difference.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
So when the official Medium iOS app comes out, they'll have to go back to
every single contributor and get them to agree to having their articles
published in the iOS app.

And then the iPad app.

And then the Android app.

~~~
tuxracer
Would each new app not be covered by "solely for the purpose of displaying,
distributing and promoting your blog."?

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voyou
I still don't really get Medium. My current mental picture is that it's
something like Pastebin with nice formatting - if you want to post something
but you don't want to go to the trouble of setting up somewhere to host it,
chuck it on Medium. I can see that being a useful service, but it seems likely
to become a commodity (look at all the pastebin alternatives out there), and
not vastly easy to make money from.

~~~
derefr
The interesting and invisible-from-the-outside bit of Medium is the
collaborative editing/review system. It's not just a pastebin; it's really
laser-focused on editorials and essays.

~~~
stfu
I always thought its laser-focus was on having overhyped headlines for
underwhelming content.

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Udo
I'm probably not the only one here who added medium.com/* URLs to their
subconscious spam filter. This is a smart move on Medium's part to break that
perception - or to intensify it, depending on the type of people and posts
coming in from now on.

~~~
throwaway420
I have a hard time understanding why some people hate Medium so much. It's
probably not ideal for full-time bloggers who wish to monetize their work and
have total control, but it's a great platform for casual bloggers and readers.
The content there is usually pretty good.

Maybe I'm just missing something obvious, I don't know.

~~~
Udo
In my case, it's not hate. There was just an endless stream of trite posts
that got linked on HN too much.

But if there's real antipathy, it's probably the same mechanism as with Svbtle
- except that the more talented bloggers were _already_ on Svbtle, not on
Medium. If you make an exclusive platform like that, the perception is that
it's made for self-absorbed people by even more self-absorbed people. That's
not a good impression to leave behind.

