Protect Your Work

From: ASJA/Alexandra Owens <75227.1650[_at_]CompuServe.COM>
Date: 23 Oct 96 15:02:54 EDT

        / / / / / / / / /

AMERICAN SOCIETY OF JOURNALISTS AND AUTHORS (ASJA) 1501 Broadway, suite 302
New York, NY 10036
tel 212-997-0947
fax 212-768-7414
e-mail 75227.1650[_at_]compuserve.com
http://www.asja.org/

               Protecting Your Writing: Give Yourself Credit

                 Prepared by the ASJA Contracts Committee

When you distribute tearsheets--as samples of your freelance work or as a courtesy to article subjects--or post your writing on the Internet, what can you do to help protect your rights?

     Fortunately, U.S. law is on your side. As a freelance, unless you transfer your rights to a publisher or another party, you own the copyright in your work from the moment of creation. It's your property, and you have the right to control and charge for its use. Without your permission--

+ If a company reprints your article in its employee newsletter, or
       makes copies to hand out to customers, that is illegal.

+ If a publicist photocopies your article for press kits, that is
       illegal.

+ If a copy shop combines your article with others into a "coursepack"
       to be sold to students, that is illegal.

+ If a fan reproduces your article on a homemade World Wide Web page,
       that is illegal.

+ If your magazine publisher approves a request for the reuse of your

       article, even though you never signed over more than one-time rights,
       that is illegal too.

     The law does not say your work must bear a copyright notice--a label 

announcing your ownership--but a notice warns those who may not know the law, so no one can claim "innocent infringement."

     While books almost always include a copyright notice in the author's name, magazines and newspapers rarely note ownership of individual articles. The blanket copyright notice in periodicals covers the publisher's own copyright in the issue as a whole (the "compilation copyright"), not your copyright in your own piece of that whole. But when you're in control--such as when making photocopies for your own use, posting on the Internet or circulating an unpublished manuscript--you can add your own notice.

     ASJA's Contracts Committee recommends the following form:
        __________________________________________________________
        Copyright (c) 199x Author Name. It is illegal to reproduce
        or distribute this work in any manner or medium without
        written permission of the author, street address, city,
        state, phone number, fax number, e-mail address.*
        __________________________________________________________
           * (Or c/o your agent, your writers' organization, etc.)

     With such a notice you warn, "This is my property. Don't use it without 

permission." You send potential reuse customers directly to you, saving them the extra step of tracking you down through a publisher. And you lessen the chance that your publisher may authorize reuse when that is properly your right.

                                       *

     For information on registering copyrights with the U.S. Copyright Office,

see ASJA's "Copyright Registration for Freelance Writers: Why and How to Register Your Articles," available at www.asja.org/cwpage.htm or, if you send a self-addressed stamped envelope, from the ASJA office.

                                      ###

Received on Wed Oct 23 1996 - 19:20:12 GMT