[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

This is not a job for copyright law. It's a job for the contracts, and the lawyers who write them up.

We have basic standard provisions in place to protect factory workers and such from over-exploitative and detrimental working conditions and ensure certain workplace rights without having to involve everyone hiring the lawyers for non-special situations.

I don't see why we can't have something similar for content creators, especially since "intellectual property should be treated almost exactly equivalent to real property, only more special!" seems to be the song of the day.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't be able to lease out their birthright for a mess of pottage made of magic beans if they truly want to.

But it would be nice to have clearly understood standardized term limits to just how much and for how long (just as we have Life+ rules for pre-humous public domain eligibility, at least outside the US) someone can involuntarily get screwed out of their own creative work, as places like Writer Beware point out that there are plenty of predatory publishers and agents out there.

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

But the bottom line is, they voluntarily signed contracts which forked over material to NA, and dropped all future claims when they later settled for $200k. Apparently, they changed their minds about that later in life, despite not having worked on the material in ~30 years.

That was after the original Superman copyright had expired and was up for renewal. Perhaps there was a clause in the settlement limiting them to not claiming during the original copyright term, perhaps there wasn't. Considering they don't seem to have gotten countersued around the time of the 2nd try in the 60s, maybe it was the latter.

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Right, so you knew this and brought this up as an example of the evils of work-for-hire anyway...?

No, I found that out after doing a bit of digging, as it turns out that while Action Comics #1 was treated as a work for hire by the company and everyone else, it seems, it actually wasn't as Siegel & Shuster did not create the Superman story specifically on commission for them or however it works, but they brought a pre-existing written-and-drawn comic to the publisher who said they wanted to publish it but needed to re-arrange the story to fit the issue.

So their families at least get the early parts of the Superman mythos which S&S came up with before the publisher started publishing the comics and/or were incorporated into subsequent comics from the original concept sketches/etc.

Probably Jack Kirby would have been a better example of true "work for hire" detriment, as he contributed much vaster amounts of stuff that the Marvel comics continuity is still based upon and using, and it seems that sometimes they would even deny him so much as a co-credit for his own creations and additions, apparently on the grounds that they would have to pay him more if he was properly credited for his extensive contributions.

And in any case, the very concept of work-for-hire can be used by the publisher to try to falsely appropriate a creator's work.

I rather doubt that Colleen Doran is the only one to have had one of her former publishers claim that her original stories and graphics which the publisher approached her to publish was in fact their own creative work which they'd just happened to hire the then-teenaged Doran to illustrate.

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

A single example, even a prominent one, isn't necessarily the best way to evaluate a system. Plenty of writers who work on content like TV shows receive residuals for years because, say it with me now... they negotiated for it in the contracts.

Such contracts have changed over the years as people have become aware of their drawbacks.

For your hypothetical Simpsons example, what seems to happen in this case (there was a Television Without Pity comment or interview with a female TV show writer regarding how the writing process works; unfortunately I can't remember for which show and it was a few years ago*) is that when an original character is created by her on the show, she gets paid a little extra for that character's appearance on the show.

If another writer uses her character as well, then she also gets paid a little extra for the appearance, but a very small amount compared to what she gets paid when she writes the character herself.

While she can't take her character to another show (unless the network is doing a spinoff and wants her to write for it too) and she can't stop her character from appearing in future episodes if she decides she hates the show and never wants to write for it again, if the network keeps using the character, they have to keep paying her that tiny amount per appearance that she gets when another writer adds her character-created-within-the-context-of-the-show to episodes of the show.

So no, it's not total control and obviously wouldn't be. But as long as the company keeps using her creative work, she does get some continuing benefit from her creation, even if she has no real control.

* I think, given the timeframe and the fact that I don't watch all that much US network TV, it may have been Veronica Mars, Life (that cop show with Damien Lewis), or Mad Men.

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

"Work-for-hire" may not be a perfect system, but it is basically necessary for collaborative efforts, and allows publishers to take risks on producing content -- and hiring content creators.

The flipside of that is that content creators are risking producing content for the publishers which then they may not even get paid for, while the publisher still "owns" the work and can derive future profits from reselling it, or at least attempting to.

I'd link you to an example of such, but I have too many tabs full of TL;DR text open and I can't find it again.

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

And in the same way that it's up to you as an individual to take responsibility for your actions and actually negotiate for the sale of a home, or get a good salary, or haggle for a good price on a car, it's a content creator's responsibility to negotiate for a satisfactory contract... or walk away from a bad deal.

Funny you should mention the cars, as it seems that the US has a "lemon law" designed specifically to protect consumers from being shafted too badly by the purchase of egregiously bad cars. And provides consumers with rights that "may exceed the warranties expressed in purchase contracts".

Again, I'm not saying that people shouldn't be able to sign bad deals which end up not benefiting them.

Only that there should be a limit to how long those bad deals can last, and that the truly exploitative ones be able to be invalidated if there is sufficient cause.

There are other consumer protection laws in place to protect people not so much from their own stupidity or ignorance, which you seem to believe to be the trumping contributing factor, but from being so grossly taken advantage of by profoundly negligent and/or outright predatory parties.

Again, I don't see why content creators shouldn't have some limited protection under the law against those latter such, just like other people do.

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

(By the way, holding onto the copyrights is far from a guarantee that the content creator will be set for life and/or paid what we might believe they deserve. I'd be here all day if I had to list artists who were not in a work-for-hire situation, created iconic and enduring works, and did not receive large enough compensation to retire for life at 40.)

Have I said I expected this to be a guaranteed minimum income for life+50/etc. thing?

No, only that the creators should have "a fair shot" at deriving benefit from their creation if they can, and not have it totally tied up by a publisher for an indefinite time if the publisher ends up not publishing for whatever reason.

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Also, you're not really siding with the author in this case, you're siding with Open Road over HC. Did HarperCollins lose its moral compass when Jane Friedman left and started her own company?

Did I say anything otherwise?

No, I actually said (emphasis added):

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Myself, and I admit this is emotionally-based, I'd side with whichever side the author herself picked, as she seems reasonably enthusiastic about having this particular book published by this particular company, given that she went and recorded a new video message talking about the writing the story in the book for said company's website.