Re: Re: derivative work - rights to publisher and rights reserved

On Fri, 29 Apr 2005, John wrote:

> At 4:55 PM -0400 4/29/05, Mike Bradley wrote:
> >
> >One can't commission a work after it has already been created, one can
> >only buy it or, at least, buy the rights.
>
> No, but one can commission a work before it is created, and then
> decide whether or not it "shall be considered" a work for hire.

The oddity to me, in determining whether a work is a WMFH *after* it's been created is that it changes not merely ownership, but authorship, and authorship strikes me as an immutable attribute. The authorship issue determines not only initial ownership, but also the term and the way in which the term is calculated.

It seems completely wrong to me that a work can be created with one person as an author, so that the work has a term based on the life of the author; and then, by contract, it can be changed so that it has a different author, and a term calculated based on number of years from creation or publication. Received on Tue May 03 2005 - 01:14:52 GMT