ARRL QST/QEX Publishing Release

Several years back (2016) I presented at the TAPR Digital Communications Conference (DCC) here in St Petersburg. My talk was on IPv6 for Amateur Radio and how we're deploying it on HamWAN Tampa.

As part of the presentation I wrote a paper for the proceedings of the conference IPv6 in Amateur Radio. After this the ARRL approached me to publish it in QEX and I was all for that. I gave the ARRL the raw document and said to publish it. My document was released under the GNU FDL and should have been all they needed. However the ARRL wanted a special license to it, and I told them to use what ever, I'll assign limited rights for them to publish it.

I was sent the following release:

From this the text is the most damning

I hereby grant all rights to my original work, including images and diagrams, for exclusive use by the ARRL, its licensees or assigns. I grant the ARRL exclusive rights to publish, reproduce, distribute, exhibit and perform the work in any language in all media now known or hereafter developed. This shall include digital archives. I also agree that I will not utilize any portion of the work or any reference to the work, except as specifically permitted below, in any other media without the express written consent of ARRL, which consent shall not be unreasonably refused.

It is not a duplication of previously published material (except as noted below), and suitable footnotes to reference source material, where applicable, have been included. I also state that this or similar material has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere (except as noted below). I understand that the ARRL staff may edit the manuscript to fit style and other publication requirements. Authors of QEX articles are compensated at the rate of $50 per published page, payable upon publication.

Full stop. This first paragraph is giving up all rights to my original work to the ARRL, including all patent rights for their exclusive use. Then I'm further restricted from distributing it in other media, such as the conference proceedings or on the web. I'm also unable to present it at other venues in the future with out the "express written consent" of the league.

They didn't create it, and my values are worth more than the paltry $50/page offered.

It's the why the quality of articles in QST has gone down over the last few decades.