Why Billy Bragg’s Fight Against Bad Contracts Matters

Billy Bragg’s back in the news today, calling out MTV for a poorly worded contract that appears to give Viacom unlimited rights to do anything with any content uploaded to its new Flux service.

While Flux and other social media outlets might have only the best intentions at heart, it’s important for you to scrutinize the terms and conditions of any online service before you upload your content.

Let’s say that MTV gets a new boss — what happens if that person has different plans for your content? An innocent slip-up by a launch team can turn into a mess pretty quickly. If the next Taylor Hicks uploads something to a site and gets famous, there’s nothing to stand in the way of a large corporation reaping huge financial rewards while the artist gets nothing.

And that is what Billy Bragg’s trying to remind us.

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