While I was flicking though the April 2009 edition of Australian Home Beautiful, published by Pacific Magazines, for some reason I read though the magazine credits and discovered what I thought was a bit of a bombshell…
“All material sent to Home Beautiful (whether solicited or not) will not be returned. Unless otherwise agreed beforehand, all rights including copyright in such material is assigned to Pacific Magazines upon receipt and Pacific Magazines may use or sell the material in all media worldwide in perpetuity without further consent or payment.”
What I thought was a bombshell was really a series of landmines;
‘…all rights including copyright…is assigned to Pacific Magazines’
‘…may use or sell the material in all media worldwide’
‘…in perpetuity without further consent or payment.’
If the first two don’t get you then the last one will.
I’m not sure about you, but reading this sort of stuff buried in miniscule type winds me up as a writer, a photographer, and a reader. After all, how much of the content is sneakily misappropriated from people who weren’t aware of the draconian baseline submission rules?
Isn’t it terrible that that a magazine group starts its negotiations with contributors on the basis that anything you submit to us, is ours on receipt, and we can use it wherever we want, however we want, forever; and we don’t owe you a thing.
I didn’t see any such rights appropriation in the few other magazines I had lying around, so what makes this magazine group so special?
Is it a case of contributor/artist/writer beware, or do we all need to be painfully careful we don’t fall afoul of overly severe submission rules?
What do you think as an artist or a reader? I know I’m not particularly keen on buying the magazine again.
chasingsooz
It’s unethical and disgusting. Not sure if it is even legal either. Thanks for bringing this to light. I certainly wont buy the magazine again either.