Re: [ARMini-support] Insignia / copyright manual
- From: Jim Lesurf <jcgl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: armini-support@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 12 May 2018 09:27:02 +0100
In article <gemini.p8j2ax00okz1v02cc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Alan Wrigley
<alan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Jim Lesurf <jcgl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[snip]
I'm going to tentatively keep this going since the question of copyright
is relevant to our use of RISC OS computers, and indeed to all the
software I write for RISC OS not to mention anyone else's.
Copyright automatically rests with the author of the work unless it is
explicitly signed away. Granting someone a licence to publish your work
doesn't automatically give them the copyright.
Agreed. We should really be talking about copyrights (plural) since there
are various types of 'right' which can be involved. However the reality is
that many authors/musicians have signed essentially 'all rights' deals with
a company (publisher or music biz, etc) in return for some paymeny
arrangements. That means they *don't* get back any rights later on without
the agreement of the said company *or whoever may have been 'sold on' any
of those copyrights.
I think you could therefore make a good argument that when the publisher
is no longer physically capable of publishing, e.g. through insolvency,
death or whatever, the author should be free to grant a licence to
anyone else, unless copyright was explicitly reassigned.
I agree. I'd like to see that. But as it stands, the law seems to be that a
business may have its 'assets' sold off at liquidation, and then they get
passed on again, etc. Then the author (or their heirs) can totally lose
contact with who may own the rights. All they know is that they signed them
away. Quite often we may have some company that doesn't even *know* it owns
these rights.
As a result, the author/musician is in a "do I feel lucky?" situation. They
can *risk* reusing the material, but then may be sued.
As for being dictated to by publishers, a contract is an agreement
between two parties, not a diktat by one. Its purpose is to establish a
solution agreeable to both parties. The publisher has a perfect right to
demand tough terms, but the author has an equal right to refuse them. I
don't necessarily agree that this is ideal but in a commercial situation
you either agree to terms and accept them, or you walk away if you can't
accept them.
The snag is in your use of the term "equal". In principle, yes. In reality,
usually no. In a situation where it is *routine standard behaviour* for
companies to insist on "all rights" a budding author/musician who wants to
sell there work is *not* on an equal footing with the large companies.
This is why some rights are enshrined in law as 'inalienable'. i.e. some
rights the creator *cannot* sign away, and any contract clause that says
otherwise would be struck out by a court. But of course, the creator would
still risk the stress and cost of having to go to court to do this.
I've encountered many examples of problems in this area.
e.g.1 Many of the recordings made by Sir John Barbirolli were 'vaulted' by
EMI for *decades*. The reasons seem to have been twofold. One was that he
left EMI for a few years and that irritated some at the company. Another
was that many of his recorded worlks were also recorded by Boult or
Beecham, and they didn't want Barbirolli's versions to 'compete'. i.e the
'single inventory' mentality. Only offer one version to save having to
produce and stock two.
e,g 2 The books written by Hugh Walters as juvenile SF many years ago.
These haven't been republished despite old copies of his books selling at
high prices. Example where it isn't clear now either who holds the rights,
or if they know but don't care.
The second is a minor example. The first affected the income and reputation
of many orchestral musicians over decades.
Personally, I'd like a law that required:
1) For the owner of rights (other than the work's creator) to have to
reaffirm this to, say, the BL, every X years.
2) In that affirmation confirm that, on demand, they will produce and sell
copies at a price consistent with the original costs, inflation taken into
account.
Failure to do so should mean reversion of the rights to the original
creator.
One of the weirdest examples of this I've personally experienced was when I
wrote an article for Linux Format magazine. They accepted this and wanted
to publish. But said they bought 'all rights'. I explained I reserved the
right to re-use material *at a later date, after first publication*.
They flatly refused. This is a mag that promotes open free software for XXX
sake! But don't practice what they preach. So I said 'no' and put the item
on the web. But this shows you the attitude of many large companies. If I
had to make a living from writing I may have had little choice. So, no, the
creator and publisher are usually far from 'equal' when it comes to forming
an agreement.
Jim
--
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