talon | Not a Lawyer

I am not a lawyer, but reading through this contract (bad grammar and typos aside), it seems a very one-sided contract, granting most of the benefits and rights to one party and virtually nothing to the other party.

I am a very naïve person. I think contracts should be fair to both sides. I know the publishing contracts I've signed have been heavily in favor of the publisher, but the publisher also accepted a huge risk and I was still given a variety of benefits beyond a one-time payment.

One of the benefits this contract takes away is a person's attribution to the work they create and I'm not comfortable with that. Granted, it's only on the exclusive license that they do this, but I still think a person has the right to have their by-line attached to their work and I feel it's petty to take that simple thing away.

I'm not entirely sure about the "you will not have a right to remove your content" thing - I think this should be more flexible and there should be an avenue of discussion if the creator needs or wishes for their content to be removed.

I am not happy with the license offer. In the general info part of the contract, it says you can publish your content elsewhere on the net under a non-exclusive contract, yet in reading the details of the licenses, it doesn't say that. It says instead that the contractor has the right to assert claims of infringement if it is published elsewhere.

I am extremely unhappy with the really bad grammar in the paragraph delineating rights regarding a person's name, image, and voice. There are important words missing from a crucial sentence in this paragraph, and those words could say any of several things.

I could not, in good faith, sign a contract with critical words and phrases left out of it. There is another such sentence in the contract that leaves out a critical word or phrase ("granted" or "denied" would both fit in well and mean very different things). With two sentences leaving out critical words or phrases, this contract is a Very Bad One, in my opinion.

Of course, I am not a lawyer, and perhaps I am seriously misreading this. Maybe those missing words and phrases aren't as important as I think they are, and maybe there are provisions for the creator to keep their name attached to their work and I've just overlooked it or misread it or something.

Still, I think I will write them and ask about those missing words and/or phrases, just in case.