Who owns the Content
The terms of service is unclear about whether I own my own submissions.
I've read the Terms of Service, but can't find any statement one way or another as to who has rights in the content I post. Is this considered "Steem Content"?
I coach/consult/give a lot of great advice. I'm also a lawyer. Steemit's license to me to use its content on a non-commercial basis is insufficient if it includes my own content because I happened to type it directly here rather than linking to it.
My point is that the terms of service should be clear that anything I post remains mine to do with what I want on an unlimited basis, and that others, while they may quote on a fair-use basis, have no further right to make commercial use of my content.
Great question!
You need to distinguish Steemit (a company) from Steem (a blockchain). The latter is a decentralized network that stores your content on a blockchain, while the former is a company that uses the data stored on that blockchain to profit from it (somehow). Neither of both own your content. Steem merely stores the content and Steemit merely shows your content and offers you a way to post more content.
In future we will probably see many more platforms to use Steem as their database backend and none o them will own your content.
For me, it is unclear what owning content actually means. You own the keys that can edit a post. You also own the account name that has posted the content. It should be clear that the post is available publicly and anybody can access/read it for free (on a global scale).
That said, you could attach a LICENSE to your own posts and to make sure you own your posts (what ever that means) but make sure that you don't ask for things that no-one can ensure, e.g. you can only read this post if you paid $1 to this account (that's simple not possible, technically).
I think the question is more do you retain control over the content. Since it is written to a blockchain, I would say it depends on how the blockchain functions. If you can delete your content later, permanently, from the chain, then you do still own it. But if you can't, then I can't see how ownership means that much. If the blockchain itself is considered a common asset of humanity, your content is effectively public domain.
With bitcoin, ownership is being able to move bitcoin to a new address. However, that doesn't delete the record of where that bitcoin has been--that can never be deleted. So while you retain ownership, or at least control, of your bitcoin, you do not own the ledger itself. Is Steemit content part of the ledger or is it an asset you can move around? Although to be fair even moving bitcoin doesn't destroy it. It can never be destroyed, just made inaccessible. So perhaps nobody truly owns bitcoin, they just control it for awhile. These are interesting questions.
Since what you post is stored on the blockchain, what you can do is publicly prove that the account you control (with your pass) posted the content at a certain date and no later. So someone who takes the content will always have to answer to the public proof that your account, and only your account, posted it openly on the Steem blockchain before they published it elsewhere.
But you could easily take content from elsewhere and publish it on Steemit before the original author does, so that doesn't really help. There's no way to know the Steem version was the first version.
I've heard that we own our own content, You can post it where ever you want! But this is advice I got some place else so take it with a grain of salt.
I read this the other way around. Nowhere in the ToS are you (as a content provider) assigning Copyright in your material to Steemit. Therefore if it's your original material, you own the copyright (in accordance to the law of your jurisdiction).
I read Clause 3 of ToS as Steemit saying, "there is a whole bunch of material on this site (Steemit Content) that you can read it or consume it for personal but not commerical use." It looks like an attempt by Steemit to cover their asses, from authors/ content providers claiming that Steemit help enable a breach of copyright.
I agree it could also be clearer that you retain copyright to your work.
Ultimately however I rely on commercial realities trumping any legalities or ToS. It is not in Steemit’s commercial interest to attempt to deny anyone the ability to re-use their own work. Steemit would go out of business real fast as people would stop using the platform, if they went down that route. Besides Steemit benefit much more by being enablers rather than hoarders of content.
Can we please summon the attention of a @steemit representative to comment on this matter? I am curious myself and would like to hear this issue resolved from an official source.
I've the same concerns and couldn't find any answers even now. My thoughts about the topic: https://steemit.com/steemit/@for91days/i-ve-used-steemit-for-over-a-week-my-biggest-concern-is-who-owns-the-content
My feeling is beginning to lean towards copylefting content posted to steemit. My preference would be one of the Creative Commons options.
This topic is interesting even though it is a bit old. I like the ability to store my content on the blockchain, sort of like an extra data backup. But I too never have been certain, so I switched from posting on steemit first to posting on my own site first and then to steemit. Plus, you would want to post on your own site first in case the search engines decide to penalize your site's rank status, personal sites can get hurt if Google thinks you're jacking content for your site, but a massive media hub like steemit can handle it.
Post to your own blog first then here, its good practice for seo and copyright purposes.