I syndicate my content from hypno.co.nz to several other sites: Hypnose.nu, Healthy Lifestyle Bloggers and trusted.md, for example. I have also been syndicating it to Wellsphere. However, from Dmitriy Kruglyak, founder of trusted.md, I have just learned that Wellsphere doesn’t enjoy a good reputation among bloggers and former employees. Basically, they sent out flattering form emails to health bloggers asking them to join up and syndicate on Wellsphere by replying with details of their RSS feeds. They did not mention, or require any form of agreement to, their terms of service, which claim to give them perpetual rights over the content so syndicated (something which very likely would not stand up in court; copyright is not perpetual even in the US, and a contract without explicit agreement is void).
Searching round, I’ve also found complaints from people claiming to be former employees that Wellsphere was an unhappy, and unhealthy, working environment and that there were problems with payment on occasion.
Accordingly I’ve contacted them today asking them to remove my account and all my content from their site. (There’s no way to do so from within my account itself.) I’ve removed their badges from my site and won’t be having any more to do with them. (Update: They removed me quick smart, whether because of my request or because of this post I have no way of knowing.)
It’s disappointing to see a company using these underhanded tactics to attempt to make money from the work of health bloggers. (I say “attempt to” because apparently their attempt is failing.) I’ll be a lot more vigilant in the future when people approach me and ask me to syndicate my material.
Next post, back to the positive.
Technorati Tags: Wellsphere, ethics, health blogging, copyright
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