I’ve had “The New Mother” up on Medium since 2015.
Today, I had to take it down.
In 2015, Medium was a fairly new platform, one that made it very easy to put lengthy things online in an attractive, easy-to-read format. It integrated nicely with Twitter, which I still used a lot back then. It had a comprehensive analytics page for tracking engagement. It seemed like a great place to put “The New Mother” to get it some more attention. And it was; hundreds of people who might never have otherwise read the story scrolled through that entire page over the next few months.
Eventually, attention dwindled, as I knew it would. But I figured I might as well leave the story up until some compelling reason came along to take it down.
Over the years there were changes to Medium’s platform (the establishment of a filtered paywall, subscriptions, the Medium Partner Program), but nothing I couldn’t opt out of. The licensing setting on the page remained “all rights reserved.” That was enough for me, as the Terms of Service always contained language roughly equivalent to:
You own the rights to the content you create and post on Medium.
By posting content to Medium, you give us a nonexclusive license to publish it on Medium Services, including anything reasonably related to publishing it (like storing, displaying, reformatting, and distributing it). In consideration for Medium granting you access to and use of the Services, you agree that Medium may enable advertising on the Services, including in connection with the display of your content or other information. We may also use your content to promote Medium, including its products and content. We will never sell your content to third parties without your explicit permission.
Medium.com Terms of service, march 2016 – August 2020
That language is going away at the end of the month. Effective September 1, 2020, Medium’s new Terms of Service will read:
You retain your rights to any content you submit, post or display on or through the Services.
Unless otherwise agreed in writing, by submitting, posting, or displaying content on or through the Services, you grant Medium a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully paid, and sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, publicly perform and display your content and any name, username or likeness provided in connection with your content in all media formats and distribution methods now known or later developed without compensation to you.
medium.com terms of service as of september 2020
That is a very different set of things Medium suddenly wants permission to do with my story.
I don’t know many fiction authors interested in giving away the right to publish their work royalty- and compensation-free, anywhere in the world. Not only does Medium want license to do that, they want it “sublicensable”—they want to be able to give other people the right to publish my story, too.
And what about “derivative works?” Does Medium want carte blanche to, say, hire someone to write sequels to my story? Because I don’t see anything in here that stops them from doing so. It’s a nonexclusive right, so they couldn’t sue me if I also wrote and published a sequel, but that would be a very small comfort if a global publishing platform started promoting alternate versions of my characters.
This looks like a huge rights grab. The minute I read the new ToS, “The New Mother” came down.
You can still read it, though. It’s right here on my website now, where the only one who decides what happens to it is me.