"That says, you know, you cannot revoke your submission. "Submissions are final" is a common and unambiguous, legally-binding statement." You make a good point here about this being a contract similar to other forms of publishing. I hadn't thought of it that way.
The problem is that statement may be legally common and clear to professionals (though I don't know enough about it personally to say so) but it means nothing to lay people. If I were posting my work to a collection and saw Submissions Are Final I would have no idea that meant I couldn't later delete it, therefore my informed consent in entering the contract would be weakened. No one expects to need a law consult before posting to the AO3, but many new writers would seek advice when entering their first professional contract, so they should reasonably be expected to understand a legal contract. I already know this rule exists because I read the TOS a long time ago, but a lot of people never read the TOS and reasonably wouldn't expect this to be the case. The wording *on these collection posting forms* needs to be clearer: "Once a work is submitted to this collection it CANNOT be deleted from the archive ITSELF, not just this collection. Please submit with care." Or something like that.
I'm not getting into this discussion in general, but I just wanted to point out "I didn't know, because I didn't read the ToS" isn't really a defense for anything.
Comment on Proposed Changes to the Archive of Our Own's Terms of Service and Frequently Asked Questions
Pslasher Sat 30 Jan 2016 01:30PM UTC
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NerineLunaCyran Mon 01 Feb 2016 08:08PM UTC
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