Shoutout to Colin

[Graham Samuel]

These arguments seem to assume that there is an individual author of a work. This is often true for books, but it isn't for lots of other things, including CD-ROMs. We have to include the idea that the 'author' is actually a commercial entity, like a publishing company and that there is really no individual author. For example, although Colin programmed some great CD-ROMs, was he the author in any sense? Does he still retain any copyright, or did he sign it away? What about the rest of the team that made any particular CD-ROM? I think reversion of copyrights can get pretty messy in these real-world situations.

In the revival I'm trying to do, I'm just trying to get the original publisher to agree that I can use the content of their original CD-ROM while they retain all the rights which they so painfully negotiated a couple of decades ago: I then become just the latest member of the original creation team on whatever commercial terms I can get. My USP to them is that they are taking pretty well zero risk in allowing me to do this.

Graham


On 3 Jan 2013, at 20:46, J. Landman Gay wrote:

> On 1/3/13 12:29 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:
>> Robert Sneidar wrote:
>> 
>> > There ought to be some kind of clause in copyrights where if a
>> > producer who is not the author or developer of something sits
>> > on it and does not produce a product from it within a certain
>> > time frame, say 5 years, the author has the right to reproduce
>> > it themselves.
>> 
>> While I can appreciate the sentiment, I have to say I would disagree
>> with this in practice.
>> 
>> The most important element of intellectual property is the international
>> respect for the act of creation, the recognition that the creator of a
>> work has complete say over how it's distributed from the very moment of
>> creation through a period of at least several decades afterward.
> 
> I read Bob's comment as agreeing with that. I thought he was saying that if a producer sits on a product too long, the original author should have a say as to what happens to their own work. I.e., the third party shouldn't be able to control/kill/squat on an author's creation.
> 
> If the rights reverted back to the author after a period of inactivity, then the author could decide whether to kill the product, sell it, or find another producer. As it is now, the third party gets the rights to distribution and the author is removed from the equation entirely.
> 
> -- 
> Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
> HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com
> 
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