[identity profile] ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] crowdfunding
This article caught my interest because it describes some of the boobytraps about copyright in the digital age:

Authors: Beware of Copyright

When an author signs a publication contract, insofar as it contains strict and traditional copyright notices, he is pretty much signing his life away. It used to be that the publisher would maintain control only so long as the book is in print. Today, with digital printing, this means forever: your lifetime plus 70 years.

During this time, you can't even quote significant portions of your own writing without permission from the publisher, and you could find yourself paying the publisher for the rights. You can't read your own book aloud and sell the results. You certainly can't give a journal a chapter.

(deleted comment)

Re: Yes!

Date: 2009-01-27 02:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dulcinbradbury.livejournal.com
I used to work for a publisher. NOTHING was ever "Out of Print."

It was "out of stock."

Didn't matter that we had NO intention of printing more any time soon. We lost the rights to exclusively print the book if we slipped at any time.

Re: Yes!

Date: 2009-01-27 03:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dulcinbradbury.livejournal.com
I wrote a paper in grad school on why satire should be granted the same protections as parody in fair use cases. The best phrase I came up with was "cultural iconography."

Satirists (as one example) do not have access to the current cultural iconography, which renders them less effective at what they are trying to do.

(no subject)

Date: 2009-01-27 02:11 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] writestufflee.livejournal.com
Nothing says you have to sign a contract that's this restrictive. The big mistake most first-time authors make is not getting the contract vetted by a lawyer. Of course the publishing co. will try to grab extensive exclusive rights; that doesn't mean you have to give them what they want. There's no law that says the publication rights can't revert to you after first publication, or you can't retain the serial rights, or foreign rights or whatever. It's up to the author to negotiate the rights they keep. Any author who gives away their own copyright like this is crazy already.

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