Copyright - can you explain both your copyright and if I blog on your site please?

I'll get back to you

Hi Dave,

A valid question, thanks for drawing this to our attention. I will look into this and get back to you asap.

Gina Dyer
Deputy editor

Jargon off the top of my head

Hi there anonymous,
(Now the photo is one my son took, but the cropping is art and everyone has an opinion - you say dodgy, I say I like it because it's different).

The Cloud topic is important, and I agree it's full of jargon. People use Cloud Computing, Software as a Service and On Demand almost interchangeably when talking about this topic. What I mean by cloud based products is software that is accessed through the Internet from a PC with a browser only. All of the application software and data resides on a server somewhere on the Internet, or "in the cloud". That means someone else is managing all of the IT headaches, upgrades, backups, and business continuity for you. You just have a secure log in to the functionality you need at the service level you want. All of the products we provide, from accounting solutions like Twinfield to the PageTypes CMS, to the WordFrame community and collaborataion solution are all SaaS or Cloud based. By the way, Cloud Computing generally covers infrastructure and platform products as well as applications. On Demand and SaaS are pretty much intrchangeable and tend to mean application software. We need this topic to be demystified for the average business person. I'm part of the Intellect SaaS Group, with a number of other friends and competitors like Xero, e-conomic, Microsoft, Kashflow and others who are about to publish a directors guide on this very topic - should be out in 2-3 months or so. In the meantime, here is "The Financial Software as a Service Manifesto" which Dennis Howlett and I wrote for AccountingWEB a couple of years ago.
http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/item/165822

On Enterprise Content and Collaboration... the Enterprise word comes in because of SEO and industry jargon. Some of what we do is called Enterprise Content Management (and because enterprise tends to mean "not consumer"). In plain English we build websites for people, and collaboration solutions for people. The websites could be anything, but our focus is "think business first". The collaboration covers tools like blogs, forums, wikis, social networking, bookmarking, and document sharing, as well as sharing spreadsheets and accounting data. That's one of the key things that SaaS can help with the profession. It can allow you and your clients easy access to the same up to date information for better decision making.

So, I hope that helps. Please make contact by phone or email - it would be great to hear from you.

David Terrar
dt@d2c.org.uk
http://www.d2c.org.uk

Look forward to the reply

Thanks Gina!

David Terrar
http://www.d2c.org.uk

Cloudy imagery

By the way - clouds have been used on technical network diagrams for years - they were usually used to represents bits of the network where the specific details were not important - connections would go in, and connections would come out, but how it all ticked in the middle didn't matter (or weren't the responsibility of the designer).

As the Internet became the defacto communications mechanism, the cloud image tended to be associated with the Internet, and well, the rest is history.

I've read articles that refer to a 2006 interview with Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google) as the first time 'Cloud Computing' was specifically coined to describe computing resources whose physical location was 'in the Internet' (i.e. you don't need to know where they are - as long as they can be accessed when you need them).

http://www.google.com/press/podium/ses2006.html

Cloud reference

Charles,
Thanks for the reference and link on use of "the cloud" term - excellent.

David Terrar
http://www.d2c.org.uk

On its way

Hi David,
I'm not in the office today but I thought I'd drop in to let you know that the guidance on this is on its way and will be posted on the site soon. (Probably next week).
Thanks.
Gina

Copyright?

Hi Gina,
I have to say, since you are a publisher, I'm confused it's taking so long to sort out a copyright notice and this guidance on the IP. I don't think I'm being too harsh, am I?

David Terrar
http://www.d2c.org.uk and http://biztwozero.com and http://www.twinfied.com

A week has gone by and no answer

Hi Gina,
Seems very strange to me as coyright and how you handlle the IP are so basic to what you do.

David Terrar
http://www.d2c.org.uk and http://biztwozero.com and http://www.twinfield.com

Getting out of the siding

Hi Anonymous,
It feels like I've been shunted out of sight, but I won't go away. :)

Hi Gina,
Well in to the second week without an anwer on somthing so basic as copyright and IP on this site. I've tried to shame you in to a response, but really... what gives?

David Terrar
http://www.d2c.org.uk

Still working on it

Hi David,

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you. I haven't 'shunted' you aside, you are still very much on the list! Unfortunately it's that time of year when people tend to be out and about or on holiday, so it's taking me longer than usual to speak to all the relevant parties, but I have been asking the questions and trying to get the answers for you as soon as I can.

Will get back to you as soon as I have an answer.

Kind regards,
Gina

T&Cs under development

The member services team is currently working on a new set of terms and conditions, as well as an updated privacy policy, which will both be published on the site next week.

In the meantime, if you would like to take a look at them as they stand, please follow the links below.

http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/terms
http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/privacy

If you have any comments or suggestions relating to these, please leave your comments below or write to member services: member-services@accountingweb.co.uk

I grant you a world-wide exclusive, royalty-free, non-terminable licence to use, copy, distribute, publish, transmit my post

Hi Gina,
I'm glad you didn't shunt me off, and that the answer is work in progress.

So as I understand the story so far, if I contribute a blog post, this is the term from your copyright that applies:

3.3 You shall retain ownership of all copyright in data you submit to the Website. You grant us a world-wide exclusive, royalty-free, non-terminable licence to use, copy, distribute, publish and transmit such data in any manner.

Is that right? Thanks.

David Terrar
http://www.d2c.org.uk and http://wordframe.com

Re: What does it mean?

Re:
---
And what does it mean?

If the content is exclusive to Sift and royalty free, what is the benefit of being able to retain ownership?
---

This clause is pretty much standard for any online website - we can never claim any copyright of your content as you created it.

However, because it's published on this website (the structure and presentation of which is our copyright) there would always be an implicit licence granted to us to publish the content - the above clause just makes that licence explicit to avoid any confusion.

Re ownership, there's nothing stopping you using your content commercially (ie, selling it, using it for promotions, etc) outside of AccountingWEB.co.uk on other websites or print publications - that's your copyright. That word 'commercially' is important - in contrast, we cannot use your content for commercial purposes outside of Sift Media without your permission - it's only licenced to us for publication on our sites.

I think that's what you meant by ownership?

Kind regards,
Darren

Yep, really!

... however I will concede that you could be right about the wording. It certainly wasn't intended as you've interpreted it, but I do see that it can be interpreted that way.

The intention here is for us to be able to publish / republish content on websites, in digests, in bulletins, etc (some of which circulate overseas) without further explicit permission ... but that word 'exclusive' might not be right.

The problem is that we do need some 'exclusivity' in the licence specifically for posts contributed to this site - otherwise other sites would be able to grab content from here and use it without any accreditation ... (which may contravene your copyright, but not our licence, if you see what I mean ... )

Thanks for the feedback - I'll look into this.

Cheers,
Darren