I may be dim but I can't see how the user of the NaNoWriMo website retains his or her copyright in their work. This is a quote from the website:-
'You give the party (the “Account Holder”) who owns the domain name as hosted on the Service in which you post your Content (the “Hosted Area”) a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable , fully-sublicensable license to publish and use your Content. In addition to the right to publish, you also grant the Account Holder under said license the following rights, without limitation: (i) the right to reproduce or copy or create derivative works thereof; (ii) the right to transfer, deliver, and sell the Content, which includes the distribution via computer and networks; (iii) the right to edit, modify, adapt, arrange, improve, correct, develop, translate, in all or in part; (iv) the right to update/upgrade by adding or removing; (v) the right to film, perform or post the Content in any media, and (vi) the right to use or incorporate all or any part of the Content in any products or services of the Account Holder (whether or not associated with the Service). Except as described in our Privacy Policy, neither the Company nor any Account Holder will be required to treat any Content as confidential. By posting Content you hereby waive any and all rights to be compensated by UserVoice or any Account Holder for such Content.
In order to operate and improve the Service, the Company needs the right to make certain uses of your Content as well. Therefore, when you post Content in any Hosted Area, you also agree to grant the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, fully sublicenseable, non-exclusive license to copy, distribute, sell, publicly display, publicly perform and make derivative works of your Content on the Service and on services affiliated with the Service regardless of the form of media used or of whether such services now exist or are developed in the future.'
Apologies for the length of the quote, but how can it mean that we the writers keep our copyright in our work?
The wording of the copyright clause is basically forcing you to put a Creative Commons CC-BY licence on your own work. That's the most liberal of the CC licences and entitles all other people to do anything they want with your work, including changing it and also selling it for their own profit if they want to. For that reason I will never put anything on NaNoRiMo's site!
I hadn't heard of this Nanowrimo thing, and wondered what many writers were getting so excited about. I wondered if they were a money making outfit as I am sure they wouldn't be so helpful just because they are nice. What is the benefit to writers?
I have now received a full answer from the NaNoWriMo site. They don't explain my earlier quote but they do say that writers keep their copyright and they explain how. See below:
Hi there,
Thank you so much for writing in! That's a really great question. We are highly protective of our writers' work, and all authors maintain the copyright to their novels. Since you aren't posting your novel on the site, it's only read if and when you want it to be. When we count the words for validation, your novel is scrambled, counted, and immediately deleted from our servers.I hope this is helpful! Please let me know if you have any questions, and happy noveling,
Lauren Harsma
Communications Captain
National Novel Writing Month