Re: Waiver of copyright

In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.32L2.0112260852010.1220-100000[_at_]unix01.voicenet.com> Joseph Pietro Riolo <riolo[_at_]voicenet.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 23 Dec 2001, Mike Holderness <mch[_at_]cix.compulink.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > It follows that in France, Germany - most of the world in fact - it
> > remains in your absolute discretion to license the entire population
> > of the planet to - to reproduce your work. You can also license them
> > to do so with no credit if you wish, or even to distort it in a way
> > that damages your reputation, if you wish.
>
> Can the terms in the license be altered by my estate after my death?
> If so, how can I prevent that from happening?
>
> Is it true that people in United Kingdom can waive their moral
> rights? If so, how do they do that?

Yes. Publishers frequently demand that freelance contributors sign an instrument that:
(a) assigns economic rights; and
(b) waives moral rights

I've no idea how you'd waive your moral rights if you weren't assigning your economic rights to another person, real or corporate. On the other hand, in UK law the moral rights aren't effective unless they're asserted (contrary to Berne...) so you probably don't need to do anything; just *fail to* append "Moral Rights asserted to comply with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988". An addendum to the effect that you "waive any and all moral rights granted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended" should be effective overkill.

The story is that the publishers snuck the waivability provision into the 1988 Act by raising the issue that the UK's Constitution (famously not worth the paper it's not written on) forbids perpetuities.

For that reason, I imagine that the effective way to prevent your estate altering the terms of the license is by a clause in your Last Will and Testament: UK law, like US, could be considered to be fundamentally a law of contract.

On the other hand, if the license you granted were held to be a binding contract between you and the entire population of the planet (and any other populations yet to be discovered), any of them could challenge any attempt by your estate to alter its terms. To make it a watertight contract in UK law you should include reference to some "consideration" payable or doable by the other party/ies; I'd suggest that they commit to donate
person they meet, with your best wishes, in return for which [etc]. But I'm a barrack-room-copyright-lawyer, not a ~-contract-ditto.

But WHY?

Mike Received on Sat Dec 29 2001 - 19:34:31 GMT