“Mr. Rozen, I cannot understand why Helium.com is stealing my work if the company thinks it is only worth a dollar. I mean the last time I looked, before my account was cancelled and my articles seized by your company, your accounting department stated they were only worth around $1.15 after a year or so. And I would never even be paid that since you don’t make payments of any total less than twenty-five dollars. It just doesn’t make sense to me why you would go to the trouble to alienate me, even to make me Helium’s worst enemy, over a measly dollar. What Helium is doing is really insulting even if it isn’t criminal. There is a lot of bad publicity out there, in the anti-Helium blogs, because of these systematic petty thefts, other writers who say they have had dozens of articles if not hundreds evaluated by Helium at even less than a dollar and then stolen. It’s not so much the small amount of money, which implies that Helium believes most of the work it publishes is so worthless that it should not be paid for, as the indignity of having one’s work displayed against one’s will. I just don’t understand, sir, why Helium….”

“If you would stop talking for a minute, I would answer your question,” Mr. Rozen interjected.

“Okay, then, excuse me, go ahead.”

“We have to make up-front payments, so we cannot remove the posted content. We have a non-exclusive right to keep the work. If you had sold an article to a magazine or a newspaper, a copy would be in the issue forever.”

“That’s different. The publication would be buried in archives, not instantaneously accessed like on the Net, and the publishers charge for back issues, and writers are in fact paid up front. I would have no objection to your keeping my articles if you had paid me at least $200 for each one of them – top writers get a lot more.  So what do you mean by up-front payments? I thought the Helium rating system determined who would be paid and how much, after and not before articles are posted, and that publishers could arrange to buy copies of articles directly from writers to post in their publications, Helium taking a cut. Helium has not paid me a single penny either up-front or after the fact. So why won’t it remove my work from the site? Because you are raking in advertising money?”

“We make very little money on advertising. I mean we are paying up front for the infrastructure. This is a writing site, not a reading site. And writers rate the articles, not external readers. What we are building here is a platform for eventually generating revenue from publishers. We just made a bulk sale of content for $20,000 the other day.”

“How much did the writers get?” I asked.

“Well, that varied, some got $5….”

My attention wandered from that paltry five bucks to the thought that Helium might be making handsome advance payments to favored writers, despite all the Helium rhetoric about the fairness of its rating system. Helium literature discloses that John Rozen, who is Helium’s current Vice President of Operations, was a global network server manager and builder for fifteen years, and is now responsible for Helium’s infrastructure. The infrastructure expense of a company would normally be for its underlying organization or platform for doing business. The superstructure would be the going business erected on that foundation. It occurred to me that Helium did not have enough capital to pay out anything less than $20 to the thousands or so content contributors whom its CEO, Mark Ranalli, contemptuously said should not even own a computer: "Of the first 100,000 contributors, thousands of them should have their computers removed.” (i)

The commercial preachers of Internet democracy really have little respect for democracy in itself, I mused – its just a sacred cow to be milked for profit. The fabulous freedom, openness and collective intelligence of the much-hyped Web2 is illusory – Web2 is a new way of thinking about is business as usual, but it is not really a new way of being: Its bottom is not pretty.

“How beautiful buzzards are when lifted aloft by high-flown helium, yet they are oh so ugly on the ground, when gorging on carcass!” I exclaimed to myself, and then remembered an image of a man’s best friend feeding on his dead master. At that point I was tempted to hang up on Mr. Rozen and write a poem about Helium™.

The bulk of the superstructure appearing in virtual space, or its content, is literally trash, but in terms of raw content, trash may be a gold mine for the masses inclined to dig into it, so the deeper the pile, the greater the buzzing around that content dump, the better. The site operators certainly would not be expected to actually pay for rubbish, trash, and garbage coming from people who should, according to anyone with so-called good taste, like Mr. Ranalli, have their computers removed if it were not for the energy they generate.

AOL’s plan for its MediaGLow unit, which encompasses more than 70 content sites, is business as usual: “Many of MediaGlow’s most recent content hits (share) a common online business model: Hire a few low-cost bloggers and stroke traffic by having them fling torrents of posts, links, and photo galleries at the Web. But a raft of recent hires of well-known writers, especially at AOL’s sports site FanHouse, shows the company is willing to pay for established talent.” (ii). Helium’s Kristina Knight advertisement for the Helium partnership with Hearst stated: “For any content website the key to more readers and to readers remaining on-site is the addition of more content.” Peter Newton, Helium’s Vice President of Business Development, in his discussion of the Hearst deal stated, “For any content website the key to more readers and to readers remaining on-site is the addition of more content.”  Of course the key words are “cheap” and “free” for the bulk of “consumer-rich” content. Vanity alone is motive enough for hundreds of thousands of would-be writers; why not exploit their wish for recognition, and make webslaves of them? Instead of farming out the production of content to development countries, Hearst would outsource the production of consumer-rich content to developing sites like Helium. But readers could go directly to Helium for the same content and get it free, and a single website developer at Hearst could get all the free content it wanted.  

As far as I am concerned “up front payment” no matter how much or little it is, means advance payment to moi. Mr. Rozen did not explain why I did not receive an upfront payment from Helium into my bank account, even though I was a star writer. A Helium press released had announced: “Helium announced upfront payments for all new articles being written by starred writers on Helium.com. This change to Helium's Terms of Service is a move to reward the site's highest quality writers and to promote quality content at Helium.com.”Helium’s Community Development Manager, Barbara Whitlock, spread the word in a blog critical of Helium’s censorship, refusal to delete articles although it deletes accurate articles about it: “Recently we began upfront payments for informative, non-exclusive articles plus improved ad revenue share….” (iii)

I concluded that Helium was probably paying off favored writers for “quality” writing, and that its many statements about how much writers were making could not be believed until it produced its financial records and other documents appertaining to earnings and method of payment. As we have seen from the Helium press release, its Terms of Service had been changed to reflect the new payment system, which seems to contradict its rating scheme. The TOS are included in the Users Agreement, which very few people read before posting articles at Helium. And to keep up with all the changes, those writers who post, say, 150 articles would have to read it 150 times to make sure of its “living” terms, to trans-load a time- and date-stamped copy into an electronic archive, and to relate the changes in the scheme to their income if any. In Catheryn Elaine Harris et al vs Blockbuster (Case No. 3:09-cv-217-m), the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has already held that a perpetually changing contract, where the parties have not reviewed and signed each change, is invalid. And generally speaking, one-sided, nonnegotiable “adhesion” contracts, which hardly anyone reads because they expect fair dealing including due consideration, are frowned upon by the judiciary. In fact, a check of an Internet archive by anti-Helium journalist Steven Hart revealed that the TOS term regarding the deletion of articles had been changed. (iv)

“Mr. Rozen, your adhesion contract is invalid. In my opinion, Helium’s officers know very well that. Helium™ is simply a scheme to exploit the community for content, and its refusal to delete or remove content at its creator’s request is copyright infringement and perhaps a violation of the federal computer crimes statutes.”

“As I said, we have very little advertising revenue.”

“Well, I am in the process of contacting all those advertisers who have ads placed on my articles, to let them know exactly what I think about Helium’s refusal to remove them. I still cannot understand why Helium would refuse to remove them after evaluating them at slightly more than a dollar. I can display my work on hundreds of sites for nothing, and delete it at will. I’ve received no consideration from Helium, and my work is obviously not considered of high enough quality for up-front payment, even though your community development director named me as her favorite writer, and if Helium does think my work is so valuable, then it anticipated its breach of whatever agreement it had in mind, so there is no valid contract, there is fraud….”

“The contract is valid,” Mr. Rozen peremptorily proclaimed, in the authoritative tone of a chief justice.

“Mr. Rozen, I don’t think so. That has not been adjudicated. But I must inform you that, to begin with, I had politely asked that my work be removed from your site because I no longer wanted to have my name associated with Helium™. I would have gone my way without a word more if my wish had been honored.”

As a matter of fact, I was treated by the officers of the Helium imperium as if I were some sort of plebe at the Naval Academy, and my indignation was righteous.

“I really don’t want to argue with you,” I continued, but there is a very serious self-contradiction in your denial to writers of the Power to Delete. Helium itself has deleted some of my best work because of the prejudices of the censors, yet it keeps the deleted articles on its server and claims the right to display them later. Indeed, it was the absurd editorial policies and inept so-called channelers and stewards that annoyed me to begin with and made me aware of the mediocrity of the enterprise. After my account was cancelled at my request, yet my articles were not removed, I signed up twice again and posted copies of my exchanges with Helium’s community development manager under several titles in Helium’s Business Ethics category.”

The email exchanges certainly were not an invasion of Ms. Whitlock’s privacy, as they revealed nothing more than what she had publicly stated in external blogs, and the email cast her in a good light, revealed how surprised I was to find out that I could not delete my articles or have her delete them, and indicated that she had no power to change the bad policy.

“What you did was criminal and we will have you arrested,” Mr. Rozen, having lost his corporate cool, stated angrily.

“Well, then, at least I won’t have to come to Massachusetts and appear in a Boston court, to testify about Helium’s unconscionable terms, as per your adhesion Terms of Service.”

“Don’t worry, it will be in federal court! And it will be expensive.”

Well, accusing people of crimes works both ways, and I may have arrived at a Mexican standoff with Helium outside the virtual courthouse on this issue. It was my belief that Helium, in employing misleading representations and an adhesion contract to obtain and keep and display articles on its site against the will of their creators, was a form of thievery, and I was not afraid to say so. Whether or not Helium Exchange Inc. is technically in violation of U.S. Code §1343 – Fraud by wire, radio, or television, or §506 – Criminal infringement of a copyright – remains to be determined by competent authority, and there may never be a determination since a prosecutor might not give such a case the slightest consideration. Neither would she be inclined to prosecute me for criminal trespass under §1030 – Fraud and related activity in connection with computers – knowing that I had not been barred from the site, a site that unnecessarily leaves the barn door open for anyone to gain access at any time, and knowing that my so-called unacceptable use of the site’s system as a “citizen journalist” was limited to a journalist’s protest, in its business ethics category, against its own unacceptable behavior. My “fraud”, if it were a fraud, would be limited to the value of the mere use of the system, which was free to all comers, a use that has no value at all, much less than the “more than $5,000 in any 1-year period” set forth in §1030.    

In any case, Mr. Rozen, who seemed to be a gentleman a democrat at first, had adopted an intimidating, top-down transactional tone, that of Parent-Child. Woe to the child who points out to its parent the self-contradictory or hypocritical behavior of the parent. But I was not about to submit to his domineering demeanor.

“No, it will not be expensive. You don’t have the slightest idea of who I am. You put Newt Gingrich’s advertisement smack-dab on one of my brilliant essays [actually, I had submitted only what I considered to be my worst work at Helium, although I knew it would become valuable when I received the recognition I deserved]. I will pick up the phone and call Newt, and perhaps then you will understand who I am – or is it whom?”

“The User Agreement doesn’t allow people to sign up for more than one account, or to sign up again after being expelled.”[I didn’t know that, but I don’t think that the term is part of a federal criminal statute]. “I think you asked that your account be deleted?”

“Yes, but by ‘deletion’ I meant that my work be removed from the site altogether. I did not attempt to conceal my identity – I revealed it when I signed up again and posted the example of Helium ethics in the business ethics category. At one point I thought I had been excommunicated, but I had misunderstood the issue. Anyway, your deletion policy is contradictory.”

I knew that Helium has many ‘phantom’ observers and posters using fictitious names on its site, and several writers have indicated in blogs that Helium did not mind them posting the same article under numerous topics.

“Your conduct was criminal,” Mr. Rozen barked, “and we will have you arrested! Do not ever contact Helium again! Do not try to sign up again! Do email Barbara Whitlock or anyone else at Helium! Do not call us! Do not contact us again!”

I did not want my guerilla interview to end on a hostile note. I was more annoyed than angry with Helium. I believed that I might help change Helium for the better, perhaps add something of value to the enterprise, and by doing so negotiate a more favorable arrangement not only for writers but especially for my anarchic self, not withstanding the “take-it-or-leave-it” adhesion agreement. So I adopted a childish, wheedling tone.

“Oh, please, Mr. Rozen,” I pleaded hurtfully. “I didn’t mean to make you angry. You are such a gentleman, and I thought we could settle this as gentlemen, and that I could remain as a Helium writer. I have better things to do than to bother with some Internet site, but this site has raised capital and has many distinguished directors on its board. Helium is obviously on the leading edge of the transition in this business, and I want to be part of it. Please, sir, let’s be gentlemen about this.”

“All right,” he kindly responded. “I can arrange to have your account reinstated over the weekend. But you must promise not to engage in unacceptable behavior again.”

“Oh, thank you. I’ll be good. I won’t be a hassle. You know your Barbara Whitlock has said I’m her favorite writer. I’m thinking you might take a look at my work, give me a hand up with the publishers, a way around the rating system.”

“We have to stick with the rating system.”

“Do you believe that a really great writer could be elevated to the top of the business by the system.”

“No.”

“The rating system gives writers something to do,” I observed, “and creates a buzz. It reminds me of the hog farmer who gives his piglets broken bowling balls from the bowling alley in town to play with so they don’t bite each others ears and tails off. Academically speaking, nominal rating system’s like Helium’s is not scientific. It might be useful, but I believe in divine intervention, so to speak, of a hand reaching down from above to pick up talent intuitively.”

“We have to stay with our rating system. We are perfecting it little by little,” Mr. Rozen declared.

“But it will never get close to perfect. It is rating opinions to discover which ones are most popular, and doesn’t address the facts, or, at the very least, the quality of writing. I’ve been around many rating systems on writers’ sites – they are ridiculous. I gave some thought to the subject, and came up with a better idea for a funnel.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I concluded that there is no truly "scientific" critical method as to quality, nor any one way to determine what will sell best even if it is "vulgar", but there are sociological aids that can be employed to make a better funnel, so to speak, than the constipated funnel being used by orthodox or mainstream publishers. I figured it would be a good idea to build a bigger and better funnel, utilizing a set of simple and usually valid critical techniques which could be easily taught to "focus groups" of reader/raters by means of pop-ups and online guides, etc. Your CEO has publicly declared that thousands of Helium contributors should not even own a computer, the quality of their writing is so bad – instead of insulting them, why not educate them? A few persons with professional critical experience and a knack for knowing what might sell well would make selections from those works sifted out by the trained reader/raters, and those works would be published. Funds could be raised from investors, subscriptions to the monthly book club selections could sold, and so on. Stars could be discovered, best-selling authors, in a sort of American Author competition. I tried to develop this concept with publishers ten years ago. Only one publisher’s representative would speak with me. He said my notion of an Internet-based funneling or screening process was generally a good one, but way ahead of its time, and publishers themselves might eventually employ it themselves, but would tend to drag their conservative feet because they fear for the bottom line and are reluctant to invest in something that might result in self-cannibalization.”

Mr. Rozen was a good listener, so I droned on:

“Cooperation is the way to go, but many temperamental creative artists do not seem to go for it. In forums, for instance, they tend to form cliques or vicious nose-to-tail circles that exclude others, and the process spins into a private club of backslappers who really do not appreciate serious criticism. So-called serious writers who set themselves up as helpers at various sites were not really competent critics, were not even acquainted with many of the orthodox principles of criticism worked out over the years, and worse, many of them buttered up friends and put down enemies as part of the community activities, trying to make a public impression on everyone. Hence I saw the need for a more informed and objective critical process behind the scenes, conducted by focus groups with rotating membership, "self-trained" in basic principles via drop down instructions in pertinent categories, Q&A, Mini Courses, and the like. Other data, of the quantitative sort such as traffic data, would be used in conjunction with the critical process. Those works sifted out of the mass would them be reviewed by an editorial panel, all but one of whose members would also rotate. One editor could "veto" one selection and replace it with his arbitrary choice, even if a piece of nonsense (might be a best seller). At first, two books would be published each month. And so on, the actual details to be discussed and worked out.”

I paused, but Mr. Rozen did not comment.

“You know I wrote an interview with the owner of a now-defunct net-centric business called BLOSM, which means “by the light of the silvery moon,” meaning he worked late nights as a bootstrap capitalist. His rating methodology was quite advanced. BLOSM was designed to take the reading and selection process off publishers. “Would you like to read it?” (v)

“Send it along, and I’ll read it over the weekend. I will have your account reinstated. It will take four days. Go to the site, enter your identification and ask for a password, and it will be sent along.”

“Thank you. It has been a pleasure.”

#

Shortly after my conversation with Mr. Rozen, I received a terse email from him that my account would be reactivated providing that I admit I had wrongfully accessed the site; to which I responded:

"Thank you very much, John. I was pleased to converse with you, and found you to be quite a gentleman. I am eager to move forward constructively without a admission or denial of wrongdoing on anyone's part. By the way, you may be interested in the constructive suggestion in this little unedited 7-minute article I whipped out with our conversation in mind: An "adhesion" contract is basically a one-sided, so-called contract that the other side will supposedly adhere to because there is no alternative. Most adhesion contracts are so one-sided as to also be "unconscionable.” People rarely read the documents before they click their so-called acceptance…. If someone did read the terms and took them seriously, as enforceable, s/he probably would not want to sign…. When something goes wrong and the writer wants to leave the so-called community, there is, for example, the clause preventing the writer from having his or her work removed from the writers’ site. If writers (often insultingly called "content providers") took a look at the "User Agreements" on Internet sites, they would not click on the "I agree", not if they have something at risk. Now if Helium were really a "community" or “cooperative” venture, members acquainted with the above issue should want to get rid of the most offensive terms, so as not to alienate writers who could cause the community a great deal of trouble over what they believe is an injustice, or, for the sake of the community's integrity, make sure that everyone does in fact read and agree to the terms, in writing, and the parties to the agreement are really known to each other and not fake identities. The way to do that would be for the community to proceed as usual but to send out to a real address via snail mail the Agreement to the user for him or her to sign and return within 30 days or have their trial account terminated. Some good and valuable consideration might then be paid, say $5, to each writer upon receipt by Helium of the signed document. Additionally, the site might display the awful licensing clause above the PUBLISH button, in a striking font, as a sort of "caveat", instead of couching the term in a long text that hardly anyone, especially the naive, reads. The statement as to deletion should appear both at the beginning and end of that clause in bold font, and the language of that sentence should make it clear that under no circumstances will any material accepted by the publisher be deleted at the request of its creator.”

Mr. Rozen did not respond. I followed up my email with a suggestion that we discuss the Helium adhesion contract and that I write up an interview of that discussion with him for publication on the Helium site, whether I was a member or not.

Mr. Rozen did not respond. However, another publisher, who became aware of my concern with Helium’s terms of service  informed me that she had visited Helium.com and was unable to find any ‘Writers Agreement’, but she had found the ‘Users Agreement” and found it to be a “disgrace.”  She also discovered that Helium had in fact submitted the issue as a topic to its writers, where the issue was settled internally – only Helium writers can comment and rate – to the effect that anyone who does not read the so-called agreement and complains when they are surprised by its terms is obviously wrong.

Due Mr. Rozen’s unwillingness to reinstate me without my admission to what he claimed was a federal crime, and due to his unresponsiveness to my suggestions, in fine, to his utter silence, I arrived at the tentative proposition that Helium™ would change forms only under extreme conditions of pressure and temperature, and that, despite all the rhetoric about the “freedom, openness and intelligence” of “Web2.0”, about the hands-off rating efficacy of Web2.0 tools, about “citizen journalists” and the “wisdom of crowds”, that Helium is not free, is not open, and is not of superior intelligence at all. But inert Helium™ or its successor, say volatile Hydrogen™, could be all of that – at least Hydrogen™ would provide the energy that diverse and independence freelances like myself (HE™) treasure.

Notes:

(i)  New York Times, Mar 1, 2007… ‘Writers struggling to find a publisher are taking the high-tech, grass-roots approach’ www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/books/01podb.html: …citizen journalism (is) separating wheat from chaff, providing some hierarchy of value to the booming, buzzing confusion…Helium's answer to that is to throw a set of WEB 2.0 tools against the problem.… more importantly, a way of thinking -- that should have a lot of resonance with those news sites trying to figure out how to engage and to apply quality-centric standards to non-staff written content…. “Of the first 100,000 [contributors], thousands of them should have their computers removed,’ acknowledges the ceo…. Create a local meritocratic community of community writers. Let the writers rate each other, let the best rise to the top, and harvest it for online.”

(ii)

AOL’s Plan: Content, Content, Content, May 4, 2009, Businessweek

(iii) http://blogcritics.org/scitech/article/heliumcom-censors-content-deletes-accurate-articles/comments-page-2/#comments 26 - Barbara Whitlock

(iv)

Antihelium’s blog: http://antihelium.wordpress.com/category/heliumcom

(v) http://funnelpublishing.blogspot.com/2004/12/blosm-brought-authors-and-publishers.html.

Helium staff rejected the article. The censor said Helium does not publish interviews because there is no structure for competing interview: “From Helium Content to David Arthur Walters, Thu, Nov 29, 2007 at 1:00 PM Re Your Title: Media: Internet: Ezines: BLOSM. Failed professional writer's site was promising  Hi David Arthur Walters “Helium.com is sending this email to inform you that your submission was declined because we don't have the structure in place to deal with interviews--other members typically would not be able to write competing interviews about the same person or event.”

When I objected strenuously to Barbara Whitlock, Helium published ‘BLOSM.’ So Helium does in fact publish interviews; for instance: “The solution to freelancers? Posted by Lauren Drablier on November 19, 2008: Peter Newton, the VP of business development at Helium.com… has worked at Monster.com and The Boston Globe where he was the vice president of advertising… PN: “Helium represents the first true meritocracy in the publishing industry…We don't select writers ….After a writer submits an article, he/she is presented with two anonymous articles in the same topic area to rate in an "A versus B" comparison. Through the wisdom of the crowds, the best articles rise to the top….”