Forbes wants to resell content it got for free

Erik Sherman of BNET reports that Forbes.com is taking free content from bloggers and wants to resell it in other formats.

Sherman writes, “In other words, Forbes can take any free blog material and use it in any of its magazines or give permission to any other publisher that has licensed the Forbes name. It can sell rights to others to use the blog posts and also sell reprints. These rights last forever and extend to all wireless and mobile. And the writers get nothing.

“This is irony thick enough to cut, to say nothing of the stance being fundamentally dismissive of the writers that publisher wants to attract. If something is worth selling, it is worth paying for. Then again, I recently spoke with someone who worked for DVorkin when he still had True/Slant — before he sold it to Forbes, locked in his new job, and cut loose most of the writers who had helped build the site.

“‘We all got a form letter — a form letter: Your contract is up,’ the person said. ‘Thank you for your help. It was [addressed] ‘Dear contributor.’ They couldn’t even fill in our names. If he was having a heart attack in the gutter, I wouldn’t call 911.’ Ouch. At least he was paying writers something back then. Call the Forbes.com angle a refinement. Who said you can’t take it with you?”

Read more here.