Turning client articles into PLR?

It depends on what kind of agreement he had in place with his clients. When I buy articles, I make sure I buy all rights.

In the absence of a contract, they may or may not fall under work for hire conditions which, depending on the jurisdiction, may mean the articles are considered the property of the buyer or the writer.

I think he's a fool - pure and simple.

If you write for payment the copyright transfers to the customer - you no longer have those rights as you sell them.

If someone checks copyscape and one of the previous customers find out their work is being resold - he will lose any rep as a writer and as a marketer.

Somehow, I expect that rep isn't too high to begin with....

kay

He's a writer for hire, and by default he'd have given up all ownership to the articles once they were paid for by his clients. Not only is it ethically wrong to be selling them, he's also indirectly revealing who his clients are and that they've paid to have articles written for them (all anyone has to do is a Google search to find this). He could also lead to his clients getting banned from sites like EzineArticles if they've submitted the writings that they thought they had full ownership of.

Thom

As Dan said, contractual obligations or jurisdiction will dictate whether or not this would be illegal/copyright violation. For example, for work for hire jobs in the US, copyright goes to the employer; in Europe, the employee retains copyright. Legal issues aside, I find it very unethical.

I see a whirlwind of sh%% stirring up on that one and possible lawsuits.

Imagine the people that bought the original articles when they see their article on other peoples sites with no links or references. They will want to go after these people posting the article. Fingers will be pointed back and forth and it will get ugly.

I'm with pretty well everyone else - regardless of the legal specifics, it's not a very good way to do business. I always have a work-for-hire agreement in place with people who write for me, but even if I didn't and I found the content they wrote being sold somewhere else, that would be the last time I ever gave that person a cent for writing.

I assume this person isn't writing for clients any longer? If they are, they're going to find it hard to get business before long

John

As far as I am concerned when I have sold an article to a client all of the rights are handed over. I do sometimes use client's articles as samples though but I would never re-sell them.

Legally it may be fine depending on the contract with the client (if he was giving the client full rights it's copyright infringement though). Ethically it seems totally unkosher.

I second what everyone else said - in the US it is illegal; he does not hold copyright to these articles; and it's bad business. He is deceiving not only those who paid him to write articles, but also those who are future buyers of the articles he has no rights for.

I agree with the others that it is a bad ideal to sell the articles as plr.

On the bright side, Your competition will be less and you could see influx of
new customers once they find out what he has done...lol

Have a Great Day!
Michael

This is impossible to answer since none of us know his agreement with his client.
If the agreement conveys full copyright to the client, then there is a problem, imo.
_____
Bruce

I definitely lean towards the latter, selling all rights with articles.

If your friend was unclear about his intentions with those articles when he sold them, his clients would have every right to feel scammed...

I would never trust the guy again, with anything....

When someone tells you what to do and pays you to do it, this is called "Work For Hire" and usually conveys all rights to the client.

It's virtually always like that in the US. There are some subtleties to it in the UK, and it's entirely possible a writer could - with competent legal assistance - present his writing service in a way that allows him to retain rights down the road.

Most non-US countries have a similar set of subtleties, stemming from some recognition of copyright as a "natural" right that never entirely leaves the author's ownership unless the author takes special care to convey it. The US has never recognised copyright as a "natural" right, only as a "legislated" right which exists purely because we say it does.

The guy is definitely shady, no doubt about it. I can't even imagine what his clients would think if they found out what he was doing!

Whenever I sell a custom article, the buyer gets the full rights to it. I don't even use any of the work as samples, just in case it winds up in the hands of someone who's not so honest. Whenever someone asks me for samples, I send them articles I've published for my own business - I keep all of my clients out of it.

A true professional would never violate his clients like that just to make a quick buck.

Depends on what kind of agreement he had with his clients.
So we cannot answer because we don't know what agreement it's between him and his clients.

Illegal or not, it's just not the right thing to do.

Theoretically, when you're hired to write, you're writing "works done for hire." This means that all copyright in the material passes to the person who hired you.

Most people who outsource will ensure that somewhere in their Agreement the writer agrees that the copyright passes to the hirer, once the writer is paid in full.

Without an agreement, I suppose the writer could resell the articles. However, he's laying himself open to damages claims.

Selling the articles as PLR... :-)

Very dangerous.

If just one person filed a lawsuit and asked for damages, saying that their business had been hurt to the extent of $100K or more, the writer could face bankruptcy.

Of course, there's the other side of the coin too -- the people buying the "stolen" articles. If the writer wrote and sold original articles to buyers, and then later packages them as PLR, he's stealing others' material. They bought the articles in good faith, and then to realize that the writer had sold exclusive material, which belongs to others, as PLR means that they can't in good faith use the stolen material. He's ripping them off.

It's all very nasty. He's going to have lots of people very annoyed at him.

The kindest thing you could say about the person doing this is that he's a fool. It's a real shame. If he's been writing for a while, he should know what he's doing.

Re "told him it probably isn't the best idea"... :-)

It's not the best idea, no. It may well be the stupidest thing he could do, if article writing is his business. He's trashing his own reputation.

Stand well back. You're watching a train wreck.

I would be soooo pissed if I paid for an article and found out later the writer was selling them. In most cases, even if the buyer forgets to mention that they want exclusive rights, paying for an article to be written means the buyer wants that article tailored to their needs and doesn't want other people using it...