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

At 5:14 PM -0400 5/2/05, Terry Carroll wrote:
>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.
>

That's a good point, and I had not thought about it from that angle. My problem is with the notion of a WMFH created on commission by a non-employee, who doesn't get paid unless the work is "accepted" for inclusion in the collective work, etc. for which it was commissioned; and who can't shop it around, or even publish it himself, because it is a WMFH. A better definition of WMFH would provide for compensation that is as immutable as authorship.

And I'm not sure why the attribute of authorship needs to be immutable when it is a legal artifice -- as much an artifice when the WMFH contract is signed before the work is created as when it is signed after the work is created.

John Noble Received on Wed May 04 2005 - 01:40:01 GMT