Re: Who owns the Town (Web Pages)?

> My local Merchants Association was approached by a fellow who
> proposed to do a web page for the town. When the merchants balked at
> his prices, he offered to do one for whatever they felt they could
> come up with. He'd hoped to sign on individual businesses based on
> his work for the group. They passed the hat at one of the meetings
> and in exchange, he created a web page that was basically an online
> version of a pamphlet that the merchants had printed last year. Same
> artwork, same copy.
>
> Now all parties are beginning to realize that there's more to a web
> presence than simply putting a page online. It's time to put things
> in writting and either pay him for the ongoing tasks or find another
> firm to do the job. In the event of the latter scenario, who has
> the stronger claim to the existing web pages, and more importantly,
> who owns the town address? The current site is a space on a
> commercial provider, not the artist's personal server, not the
> artist's personal internet space.

Alexa,

Don't even get into these questions, they are a waste of your and the Merchants Association time and energy. The amount of time this fellow invested in creating a web page from a single brochure is negligible (other than typing in the text, IF there was a LOT of it). If he doesn't not provide you with the HTML pages, just do them again from scratch. It will probably look even better the second time around.

Assuming you that the Merchants Association owns the artwork and the copy in the brochure itself, you can do whatever you want with it. The creation of a derivitive copy of the brochure -- the web page(s) -- grant the creator no rights over original from which they were derived.

Don't get into discussions with any lawyers here or elsewhere regarding work for hire and whether or not there was a written contract with this fellow. You paid the fellow and he used your brochure. If he is at all professional, he'll give the web pages to you or demonstrate the business reasons why you should continue to work with him. Otherwise, forget him and do over again with someone you like better. If he created any original artwork, well then, decide if you like it enough to pay him what he is asking. ;)

Whoever registered the town name with Internic effectively owns it (unless the city itself decides to try and press some legal aspect that I know nothing about). You can probably think up a better name, too.

Greg Elin
<elin[_at_]interport.net> Received on Sat Mar 16 1996 - 03:00:46 GMT