RE: Supremes rule for freelancers

Subject: RE: Supremes rule for freelancers
From: "MMdeaton" <mmdeaton -at- mmdeaton -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 15:56:36 -0700

I strongly disagree with Mann's analysis.

I was not discussing "natural" rights, whatever those are. I was discussing
legal rights related to intellectual property. If I write a piece and
copyright it, I own that piece. Other people cannot use it without my
permission. If they do, I can take legal action to recover damages. Before
the Web, in order to get a piece published so that others could read it, I
had to find a willing publisher for my creation and, in return for
compensation, grant them rights to use the work. Sometimes those rights were
extensive and sometimes they were not. The same with books: If I did not
publish the book myself, I had to find someone to do that and to grant them
rights to distribute my work, usually in return for compensation, or at
least the hope of compensation.

However, even if I created something and copyrighted it and never published
it by any means, it is still might and if, say when I died, someone found it
and published it for compensation, my estate or my heirs have to grant that
permission unless the statutory rights have run out. But an ethical
publisher would recognize the rights of my estate or my heirs to work as
something I had "owned." They would make an arrangement to be granted the
right to publish the work, probably for compensation knowing my son!

I also disagree that the public has a right to learn. In our country, we
have a right to education. That does not mean we have a right to every thing
anyone else ever creates in order to learn from that creation.

The Web has changed much of this landscape. It is now very easy for me to
publish my own work. I pay a small fee each month for a place where I can do
that. However, it is also incredibly more easy for someone to copy (steal)
my work and pass it off as their own. It has happened to me.

In this climate, I have become even more protective of my intellectual
property rights because there is no intermediary, such as a large publisher,
who has paid me in advance for the right to distribute this. Each time
someone copies my work and passes it off as their own, I lose some of the
value of that work. I also lose the potential for any future value that work
might have earned me.

In some sense there are two issues here: the ethics of plagiarizing the work
of someone else and the legal issue of stealing something that does not
belong to you. I also think it is disingenuous to say that Napster did not
deny artist's rights. Those copyright holders who wanted Napster closed down
were certainly protecting their own financial interests, but how is an
artist going to earn royalties if people take the music and do not pay for
it? How will the recording company pay the royalties? And how will artists
control the distribution of their work, even if they have made a business
arrangement with a recording company to help with the distribution of their
work?

Mary Deaton
Deaton Information Design
Web Shui at
http://builder.cnet.com/webbuilding/0-7705-8-6301693-1.html?tag=st.bl.3880.a
lso.3880-8-6301693-1
News and opinion at: http://www.mmdeaton.com

-----Original Message-----
On Behalf Of John Locke

Mary Deaton writes:

> You never have the "rights" to my creations unless I grant them to you.
> "Rights" to intellectual property are a legal concept. It translates to
> "ownership." I may grant you access to reading them, but that
> does not mean
> I grant you legal rights to the ownership of the creation, and
> that is what
> copyright law is all about. When I publish something on my Web site, it
> remains mine legally and I can go after anyone I catch using that material
> in a way that I have not approved or given permission for. And granting
> rights does not have to include compensation. It typically does,
> but it does
> not have to.

... in response to Glenn Maxey, who wrote:

> Just to add another view, your statement that "(I) do not have a right
> to what (you) create" is misleading and potentially outright wrong
> without further clarification.
>
> I mean, you wouldn't have created it if you didn't want to give people
> the right to access it. Hence, the additional clarification would be:
> "You do not have a right to what I create... without adequate
> compensation."
>
[snip]

> What matters is the ROI to the copyright holder, who has run the numbers
> and calculated that their profits are too low to re-press and re-release
> niche music.
>
[snip]

> Don't let the arguments of the business blow smoke in your eyes.
>
> As this relates to (technical) writing, the goal of most writers is to
> be read. The goal is not to become rich off of the copyright, because
> this is sure to lead to the work not getting read. Getting read by large
> numbers of people has its own rewards, direct and indirect.
>

As a freelancer for going on seven years now, copyright is a most
interesting topic for me. While I'm quite sympathetic to Mary's point of
view, and used to agree wholeheartedly, I've read quite a bit recently to
change my mind.

What's most interesting is to study the history of copyright. A great
article appeared in The Atlantic a few years ago: "Who Will Own Your Next
Great Idea?" by Charles C. Mann. It's quite long, but you can read it at
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98sep/copy.htm. It's a comprehensive essay
tracing copyright in England, France, and the drafters of the United States
Constitution. He also discusses Napster, the music industry, the publishing
industry, and the Open Source movement. Of Richard Stallman (founder of the
Free Software Foundation), he writes:

"Writers, he said, do not actually own their words. Computer programmers --
Stallman is one -- do not own a single line of their programs, and never
have. Painters own only their canvases, and those only until they are sold.
Far from recognizing any natural rights of authors, he said, copyright is a
bargain between the public and publishers, in which the public consents to
restrict its rights as a kind of bribe to publishers. 'The Constitution
doesn't care whether content owners make money,' Stallman claimed, puffing
slightly. 'What's important is the public's right to learn.'"

Fodder for thought.

--John Locke
http://www.freelock.com




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RE: Supremes rule for freelancers: From: John Locke

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