(Want to go into a writing career with your eyes open? Get a copy of my book, "Your Writing Coach" from Amazon or your other favorite online or offline retailer. Want to reach your writing goals in 60 days? Check out my Breakthrough Strategy Program at www.jurgenwolff.com)
I just sent a film-maker friend a notice of a contest in which
people are asked to submit a short film that has the potential
to be developed into something longer, like a series or a feature film. Then,
just out of curiosity, I read the terms and conditions and found this clause:
Please note that upon payment of any prize money your content becomes the exclusive perpetual property of [the sponsor of the contest]. However, you will continue to participate in any revenues as set forth in our terms and conditions.
Whoa! Wait a minute…for a few hundred dollars, they get the rights to develop your material as they see fit? Sure, they cut you in on the profits but you lose control. Well, maybe if you get rich it's worth it, so let's see what they give you:
Fifty percent of the gross receipts! Wow! Sounds great!
Wait, it’s 50% minus their expenses, interest of 6% of such expenses, and minus a distribution fee of 35% of the gross receipts. Oh, and for video, DVD, VOD or similar, only 22% of the revenue will be counted as gross receipts.
Even with all this, it may be a good way to get your career started, especially if you're having trouble getting your work considered anywhere. After all, a small percentage of something is worth more than a big percentage of nothing. But always read the terms and conditions to know what you’re getting into so you can make an informed choice.
Ben Hoyle reports in the (London) Times that the UK Society of Authors forecasts that book piracy on the internet will ultimately drive authors to stop writing unless radical methods are devised to compensate them for lost sales.
The article says, “The internet is awash with unlicensed free digital copies of individual chapters or in some cases entire books. Prominent victims of book piracy include Jamie Oliver and J. K. Rowling but the most vulnerable writers are less well-known poets, authors of short stories and writers of cookery books.”
I can attest to the fact that you don’t need to be famous to be a victim: I found a complete copy of my “Your Writing Coach” book online as an unauthorized PDF. I asked the hosting site to take it down and they did, but it reappeared within a few days with a slightly different file name. Once again I demanded that it be removed, and it was, but this feels like a futile chase.
I also traced it to another site based in Russia, and they also removed it, although with the snide comment that they were doing me a favor as reading the book online probably would make people want to buy the hard copy (oh, sure).
I informed my publisher but they are pessimistic about being able to find any legal remedies when the hosting sites are in countries like Russia.
So I agree that we’re moving toward a crisis but one of the suggestions that the Society of Authors came up with, government funding of an academy of salaried writers, seems like a terrible idea. Isn’t that what they used to have in Eastern Europe? And having said all that, I don’t think there exists any force in man or nature that will actually stop writers from writing.
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See what you think about this legal case: In 1996 Stuart Y. Silverstein and Scribner’s published a book of the uncollected poems of Dorothy Parker, the witty author and poet who belonged to the famous “Algonquin Round Table” group. The poems were in the public domain.
Three years later Penguin published a book containing the same material. Silverstein sued, claiming that assembling the poems is a creative act and that Penguin had violated his copyright (which applied to the format of the book, not the poems as such). He asked for damages of more than one million dollars. Penguin maintained that simply gathering uncollected poems is not a creative act covered by copyright.
Who do you think was right?
A summary judgment by a judge was in favor of Scribner. Penguin appealed and was granted a trial. Now a federal judge (the same one who originally ruled in favor of Silverstein) has ruled in favor of Penguin. He wrote: "The Court finds that Silverstein simply selected for inclusion in `Not Much Fun' all of the uncollected Parker poems that he could find and that this selection process involved no creativity."
Silverstein said he may appeal again, but if this decision stands it could be an important precedent for any writer who uses public domain material.
Reuters reports that J K Rowling and Warner Bros are suing an independent US publisher over an unofficial encyclopedic companion to the Harry Potter series, as it infringes copyright and attempts to cash in on the brand.
The target is The Harry Potter Lexicon, which is due to be released by RDR Books on 28th November in the United States. The 400-page book is based on a Steve Vander Arks' fan Web site, www.hp-lexicon.org, that was used by 25 million visitors and had been called "a great site" by Rowling herself.
Rowling said in a statement, even though she loved fan sites, she hoped to write "the definitive Harry Potter encyclopedia, which will include all the material that never made it into the novels" and donate the proceeds to charity.
The outcome of the case is of importance to writers, as currently there are a lot of books that piggyback on other works, usually feeling that adding a label such as "an unauhorized guide to..." will keep the lawyers at bay.
By the way, in a separate story, Rowling has made seven copies of a fairy tale collection that was mentioned in her last book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. She will auction one for charity and give away the six others. She said the books were a "wonderful way" to say goodbye to Potter. But the lawsuit suggests she's not really ready to say good-bye.
Traditionally it was pretty straightforward to protect material that you created: you automatically have copyright on it the moment you create it, and to document that you could register it with the copyright office, or the Writer's Guild, or even just send it to an attorney who would time-stamp it and put it in a safe place. If you signed a deal with a publisher, the copyright stayed with you and your contract spelled out what rights you were keeping or giving up or sharing.
The new media have made this a more complicated issue. Here's one example: I was looking for a place to host my podcast and ran across a site/service called MyPodcast. It's free and it looked pretty good, until I read the terms and conditions. Here is one of the clauses (stay with me through the terminology...):
"By posting content to any public areas of MyPodcast, you automatically grant, and you represent that you warrant that you have the right to grant, to MyPodcast and its members, an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, fully-paid, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, and distribute such information, rights of publicity, and content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works and other media, such information and content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing."
OK, I'm not a lawyer (if you are, let me know if I'm reading this right) but I assume the "public areas" are all the podcasts, and that "members" are anybody who has their podcast on this service...and that according to this clause, they (or the people who run MyPodcast) can take stuff from your podcast and use it any way the want, including it into, say, a DVD or book they sell and you'd never see a penny.
Of course, MyPodcast is being honest about this (assuming you read the terms & conditions, which you always should) and for some people the free hosting might be worth giving up rights. But, to me, suddenly it doesn't seem like such a good deal anymore.
