On Wed, April 08, 1998, James Rogers <jetan[_at_]ionet.net> wrote:
>
> On Wed, April 08, 1998, Bob Cumbow <cumbr[_at_]perkinscoie.com> wrote:
> >
> > To Juliann Krute's <juliann[_at_]people-are.strange.com> hypothetical
> > involving one author of a Web site giving over responsibility to a
> > second author, James Rogers <jetan[_at_]ionet.net> asked:
> > >
> > > Would a simpler model be to consider them both joint authors?
> >
> > IMHO, joint authorship is almost never a simpler model, since it vests
> > in each author the full ability to modify and exploit the work without
> > the permission of the other author(s), and requires that each author
> > account to the other(s) and share the proceeds from the exploitation
> > of the work. This generally creates an uneasy if not untenable
> > relationship.
I agree with this but I actually meant "simpler" in the sense that it seemed an easier conceptual framework rather than "simpler" as a practical matter. Reviewing the question today, I think that what I was fumbling for was a structure that would address the often collaborative nature of many of the websites whose maintenance is "handed off" from person to person, as well as the fact that such sites are often in a state of flux so constant that it seems a bit unsatisfactory (to me) to arrive at a set date when the work becomes fixed. It may be that the derivative works approach is the correct one... on reading other responses, I am inclined for the moment to think that those writers are right... but I don't like the idea which would seem to follow that *all* of the various modifications to a page should be subject to a seperate independant copyright or be derivative works. I confess that this is largely an aesthetic prejudice on my part.... overlapping copyrights of this sort and in this context seem a bit Byzantine and downright inelegant.
James
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