WRITE FOR YOUR RIGHTS

Sometimes massive corporations are either breathtaking in their audacity, or incredibly naive as to the likely response to their actions, writes Gary Dalkin. Case in point, Findaway Voices, a cross-platform audiobook distribution service owned by Spotify. The service allows users almost anywhere in the world to upload indie audiobooks and have them digitally distributed through a range of providers, with the rights owner keeping 100% of Spotify royalties, and 80% of those earned through other platforms such as Apple, Audible, Kobo, TuneIn, and Scribd.

The trouble began when on 15 February Findaway Voices/Spotify launched with a new set of terms & conditions which amounted to a massive rights-grab. It included the passage: ‘you hereby grant Spotify a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty free, fully paid, irrevocable worldwide license to reproduce, make available, perform and display, translate, modify, create derivative works from (…), distribute, and otherwise use any such User Content through any medium … in any manner and by any means, method or technology, whether now known or hereafter created…’

And if claiming the right to do whatever they liked with authors’ audiobooks for all eternity wasn’t enough, the T&Cs went on to say: ‘…you also agree to waive, and not to enforce, any “moral rights” or equivalent rights, such as your right to object to derogatory treatment of such User Content.’ So, theoretically, Spotify could make a graphically sexual version of a children’s book, distributed it worldwide, keep all the money, leave the author’s name on it, and the author couldn’t even object.

Naturally authors on Findaway Voices reacted with outrage, particularly when, as Writer Beware reported, rights holders noticed that the ‘delete’ buttons had disappeared, with one social media user writing, ‘The are actively preventing authors from pulling their audio books.’

Within hours Findaway Voices released a statement which read, in part, ‘we’ve received valuable feedback, and we understand that there is confusion and concern about some aspects of this language,’ which has to be the publishing understatement of the year so far. The next day FV published a new update to the T&C, walking back almost all of the forever rights-grab. The question remains, how did they ever think authors were going to accept it? Meanwhile the lesson is, never agree to anything without reading the fine print first.