Rights question

[MelaAlmonte]

Last year, Helium kicked out everyone from countries whose first language wasn't English. Since I lived in the Philippines, I got the boot. (Actually, English is listed as the official language along with Filipino, but anyway.)

The last email I got from them stated this:

Because you cannot access Helium, or will soon be blocked from access, we feel it is only fair to remove your content from the site. Full rights to the work revert to you.

I checked Helium to see if my article will show up, because I've edited some of them to sell here and wanted to make sure I can sell the full rights. From Helium itself, my articles don't turn up using Search. It does appear on Google though (with my Helium name "Carmela Almonte"), but the page no longer exists. Apparently, my bio page still exists but they've deleted all my articles.

My question is will there be issues when I submit those articles here and try to sell the full rights?

[jadedragon]

Welcome to CC. I wish you lots of success here.

My unofficial opinion is that the full rights released to you by Helium only means you have all the rights that exist now and they don't have any rights.

Selling an article for Full Rights means you release all ownership to is and you certify that it is unique and has not been published before. At CC Unique Rights are pretty much the same thing as Full Rights, except you place restrictions on how the article is used (leave by line, do not modify text etc).

Once you license an article for Usage Rights (or publish it yourself) you can no longer sell Full or Unique Rights to the article. The article has been used so it is no longer Uniquely available to your buyer. It's like losing your virginity - once its gone you just can't claim to be a virgin anymore.

If the articles are really truly gone you might get away with selling Full Rights but why chance it? Are you 100% sure the article was not copied or used in a newsletter or other offline publication?

Put the previously published work up for Usage Only and go write some new content for Full Rights sales. Good luck.

[MelaAlmonte]

Thanks for your response. That's what I'll do.