Authors' rights (Was: Re: Typographic copyright)

In-Reply-To: <199603251606.LAA06661[_at_]scrlc.lakenet.org>
> - my impression was that most journals
> owned the copyright anyway - not the author. Don't authors
> automatically sign over copyright to publishers when they agree to
> have the publisher publish the material?
>
> Joan Packard
> South Central Research Library Council
> Ithaca, NY

No, no, NO, please!

Academic authors are often pressured by publishers to sign over ("assign") their rights. Under the frankly aberrant Anglo-Saxon scheme of things*, authors who are in employment are (usually?) deemed to lose their rights to their employer -- so academics, and staff journalists, lose out anyway.

But sensible independent authors _license_ specific rights. "Leasehold", not "freehold". That is what the messages from the National Writers' Union and the American Society of Journalists and Authors, complaining about the New York Times and others grabbing authors' rights, are about.

Of course I have to declare an interest in the argument -- and so must anyone who responds other than "in the course of their employment".

I think though, that it's well past time to make it clear that the battle over copyright is not two-dimensional, citizens -vs- publishers. It's at least three-dimensional:

• The big publishers, naturally, want to control as much intellectual property as they can, to maximise assets and profit for the shareholders.
• Citizens want as much high-quality creative and factual work as they can get for the minimum price.
• Independent authors ("creators" -- including musicians, graphic artists and people whose work doesn't yet have a name) want to *preserve our independence*. We want to make a living from our work, without being beholden to the big publishers.

Granted that I have a financial interest: but I still think that there's a strong case for defending independent authors' rights. Otherwise, the only work available to the public will be either:

• produced in the spare time of someone who makes their living at something else -- fine work may be done like this, but it will be from a rather restricted range of people; or:
• owned and controlled by a publishing corporation, university board, government department or whatever.

Just because the same laws which inadequately defend independent creators' rights in our work are used by Microsoft and News International to defend their rights in work they own, please do not see "copyright" as an indivisible instrument of oppression. Remember, we deal directly and often painfully with such organisations, and with their increasing pressure to force us to assign our rights to them.

• The main-stream of the Berne Convention deals, in my view at least, with *authors' rights*, not copyright. These are more akin to human rights than to property rights. In most European countries it is not _possible_ for an individual to assign these rights. That's the sort of legal framework which can support a vigorous culture of independently-produced work.

Mike Holderness

(C), of course, 1996; moral rights have been asserted. A license is hereby granted to distribute this in its entirety and including this notice so long as no charge is levied nor profit made. For permission for any other distribution, contact mch[_at_]cix.compulink.co.uk. REWARD of US$100 offered for first notification of a breach of this license leading to prosecution -- I'm actively looking for a chunky test-case...

Mike Holderness
<mch[_at_]cix.compulink.co.uk> Received on Thu Mar 28 1996 - 05:05:54 GMT