Any parent will tell you that the “good cop / bad cop” routine has stood the test of time for one reason: It works.
Do any of these sound familiar?
“You’d better not let mom see you eating that before dinner.”
“You just wait until your father gets home.”
You can exercise authority just by using the suggestion that something might not be cool with someone else who shares your authority. Most of the time, this will work even without the other person being involved — or even knowing the scheme took place.
But as individual blog authors, we are all pretty much single parents when it comes to dealing with (sincere) requests to appropriate, translate, etc. the content we work so hard to produce. Assuming you are gonna be nice about it (after all, they actually asked rather than just scraped) it still takes time to craft an answer for their particular situation. This usually involves a brief discussion of copyright, and how many hours you put into developing content, and so on.
And if you do not spend the time to write back and say no, many people will just assume the absence of a (time-consuming) “no” is a good substitute for a “yes.” So you have to do something.
A little while back, I got the bright idea to put all of those thoughts down in a general framework and call it a Terms of Service page. I mean, just about every other web organization has a TOS, right? Why not blogs?
The result has been a drastic reduction in people writing to me to ask if they can do the things I would not want them to do, and an easy answer to those people who either read it and write you anyway, or write to you without seeing the TOS page.
Example:
Dear XXXX;
Thanks for writing to me to ask about _________ (fill in the blank).
The fact that you even asked before just doing it tells me that your ethical compass point is better than most. I’m sorry, but _________ activity in question) is against the site’s TOS. I get requests like this frequently and while I would like to be involved in many more co-publishing projects, time limitations prevent that.
And I am sure that you can understand that with all of the time I spend on producing original content, it is very important to me to make sure people visit my site to see it rather than going to someone else’s.
Thanks again for taking the time to ask. You can see the TOS page here.
Thanks much,
David HobbyStrobist.com
I have never even had a person question the idea of a TOS for a blog. (And why would they?) If I get a return email, it is usually along the lines of, “Wow, thanks for writing back. I hadn’t even seen the TOS page.”
Works great.
One last thing. You’re a blogger, which means that your TOS page can be much cooler than, say, Microsoft’s TOS page. Have some fun. Threaten
some bodily harm. Throw in an ancient Gypsy curse or two. It shows that you can be serious about something that is very important to your, and still maintain a sense of humor.
___________________________
David Hobby blogs about photographic lighting techniques at Strobist. This use of this article in other publications or website is subject to the conditions spelled out in Strobist’s Terms of Service.
I keep forgetting to put up a TOS page. This is my last reminder, I’m just going to do it finally. :-)
Like the last part of the post, lol.
Com’mon,
I have a blog and I run it myself. No one else is concerned other than me. I don’t have any TOS page. I don’t think that almost all blogger also do not have a TOS page too.
Ok, ok my TOS is that you, yes you, have to visit my blog @ http://www.sangesh.com.np/blog that it.
Cheers.
Hey Daren,
Nice take on the TOS. I would like to see some TOS which can avoid plagiarism. I am not sure how many spam blogs are there at the moment.
All I notice is that just as I publish an article I get 2 to 3 spam back links. I think the TOS would be a perfect way to atleast make the spammer a little afraid for his life. :)
Gypsy Curse – hehehe, you’ve just reminded me of the Borat Movie! :D
I think the TOS is a good idea – makes more sense with bigger, more established blogs perhaps (by comparison I’d have a ‘Hey, I’m surprised you commented at all’ page!)
I hadn’t really though of a TOS page, maybe I will get around to it sometime soon.
I like the idea of cursing anyone that breaks it though, very tempting.
This is a great idea. I’ve noticed that lately, there has been a lot of talk about improving communication and downsizing on the amount of time spent dealing with situations on blogs via clear, outlined pages. For example, a comment policy reduces the need to worry whether you should delete, censor or moderate. It’s clear, it’s posted, away you go. This TOS accomplishes a similar action: these are the rules, these are the consequences, cross the line at your own risk.
After reading Elise’s post on comment moderation and the discussion on policies and after reading this post, I’d like to implement both strategies into our own blog.
If anyone has more ideas about other types of outlines/rules/consequence pages to post, feel free to share the ideas!
I’ve never considered a TOS for a blog, although I’ve used it on forums sites I’ve built due to the amount of interactive posting. I can see how it would be advisable though once you start getting some traffic. As they say, “there’s one in every crowd.” When my readership grows beyond my shoe size I’ll take heed of your advise and work on my TOS.
Like Zach, I didn’t want to forget, so I just did it right then and there. Thank you for education – though I wish I had the lawyers to fight the blogs that scrape my stuff.
I think the name is a bit unfortunate but a good idea, It also leaves me wondering about the wisdom of putting a blog up on facebook since they operate a no follow policy and so presumably the clicks go to them and not to me.
Great idea, will add it to my website ASAP!
I looked at many other websites TOS page and came up with my own just to make everything look more professional.
I put up a rules/TOS page on a big forum I run right after it started. Not only did it set ground rules that were easy for anyone to reference, it also brought us a lot of inbound links from other forums wanting to use our rules.
A TOS is a legal contract the user agrees to. I would keep it simple and clean, no jokes or threats… else it might not be taken seriously in a court of law if the need arises.
Just my 2 cents.
A legal contract sockmoney? Hmm…
Hi, I am David Hobby, the guy who wrote this article.
One thing I forgot to mention is that I stick a little tracer in the bottom of my (full-feed) RSS, which tells people that if they are seeing the (appended) tracer, to contact me by leaving a comment on my TOS page.
Almost every week, a reader tips me off to someone stealing my content.
-DH
“Threaten some bodily harm. Throw in an ancient Gypsy curse or two.”
I know this is meant to be fun, but if you’re going to implement a TOS, you *must* keep it serious. Not only is a TOS effectively a legal contract, but threatening your readers isn’t going to do you a whole lot of good either.
If you’re not careful, you could end up getting yourself into legal trouble by implementing the suggestions here.
IMO, a TOS for a blog is overkill, and totally useless unless drawn up by a lawyer. You’d be much better off writing a more informal “Editorial Policy” page.
It’s interesting that some people think a TOS would be overkill. I can see why – it’s getting away from the origins of blogging, which are quite informal.
However, as blogs increasingly become businesses, due to monetization, you have to expect them to adopt the features common to other web companies. In my opinion, it’s reasonable that blogs have guidelines about how they may be used, to discourage abuse and protect themselves. Enter the TOS.
But if a blog takes that step, then they should also consider other things, such as a Privacy Statement. Now that’s a can of worms…
Hooray! David Hobby on Problogger! I’ve learned an awful lot from him and I hope that others here will as well.
4th paragraph, 1st sentence: should read “and will BE taken very seriously”. You wouldn’t want to loose a lawsuit over this or have the Gods of English hit you with a two by four!
Or even “lose”, Hisham. Sorry, couldn’t resist.
While I appreciate the whole contract with the readers thing, I’ve found that just basically being up front about your policies in a non-scary, non-legalese sort of way has a tendency to make people behave themselves. On my message board and on my comments, over the course of several years, I’ve seldom had to really slap somebody around. In fact, because of the policy being clear up front, troublemakers I’ve been warned about from other sites have shown up and been perfectly civil.
I finally put together a full-on privacy policy and a TOS (I’ve put the link as my website for this comment if anybody wants to look–warning: language) just because I felt like I wanted to get all of that in writing. No gypsy curses, though. Good idea. Maybe on the next site.