In HealthCentral’s acquisition of Wellsphere, it has come out that Wellsphere has, rather dishonestly, gotten bloggers to give the company full rights to their written work — even if it was originally published on a the writer’s personal blog.
This is particularly frustrating for me because I turned down a well-paid gig for this very reason. It is something I checked for on Wellsphere, but somehow missed. I admit, it was in the fine print, but e-mails with company representatives were murky.
I have requested to have my account with Wellsphere removed and am no longer participating in the health blogger awards. If you are a blogger, please read ChronicBabe’s post on intellectual property rights. You may want to consider cancelling your account as well. In a show of solidarity, registered members without blogs may want to do the same. To do so, email your request to community@wellsphere.com, wellsphere-system@wellsphere.com and dr.rutledge@wellsphere.com. If that doesn’t work, try this method from Kerri at Six Until Me.
[via ChronicBabe]
Update: I realized Wellsphere is the company that created an account for me last year and republished my content without my permission! I had them cancel it in November, then was dumb enough to sign up again this year for the blog awards. Apparently flattery will get you everywhere with me.
