What's good for the goose is clearly not good for the gander. "Purchase" is not "license." According to Time's own website (here) " We license Time Inc.’s peerless content, brands and products to partners in new businesses and emerging markets."

DEFINITION: Peerless adjective 1. having no equal; matchless; unrivaled. Synonyms: unmatched, unequaled; unique, unsurpassed. * source: Peerless, at Dictionary.com

Yet, that "peerless content" which Time wants contributors to produce is not something that they are purchasing like a computer or plane ticket. The software they pay a fee to license from Microsoft and Adobe, while seemingly purchased, is not, it's licensed. They may have "purchased" a physical CD of the software, but they do not have ownership of the software to use across multiple platforms unless they obtain a broader license to the work, and pay an appropriate additional fee.

As reported in PDN Pulse (here), Karen Myers, who is Time's UK’s Director of Corporate Communications, said “...Contributors need to bear in mind that commercial realities dictate that we will be using the content that we purchase in many different ways..." yet Time's website Terms & Conditions (here) make it abundantly clear (regarding the intellectual property on their website) they "own, solely and exclusively, all rights, title and interest in and to the Web Site, all the content (including, for example, audio, photographs, illustrations, graphics, other visuals, video, copy, text, software, titles, Shockwave files, etc.)."

Time UK has been, and it will remain, licensing content from contributors. They will not be "purchasing" ownership of it any more than I can take that Norman Rockwell I want to buy and (once I do) make posters and lithographs off of it. Yet that is what Time UK (and as has been suggested by others, this is a trial balloon for US contracts) wants to do.

This smacks of what occurred in the late 1990's, when Time unceremoniously foisted upon contractors, contributors, and freelancers, a new egregious contract. Many of the seasoned team of photographers, stood their ground and refused to sign, only to be replaced by those who looked up to them as standard bearers - "peerless" photographers, to coin Time's characterization. The "new team" stepped in to fill the void, crumbling what ground those photographers were standing on. You can, no doubt, see those who were undercut by the newcomers sitting back and saying "what goes around comes around..." and not missing a wink of sleep as the downward spiral continues.

(Continued after the Jump)