[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Quoth

That's exactly what I said. Like the writers for Stratemeyer you are a hired worker. You have totally taken the word theft out of context

You said: "But it's actually legalised intellectual theft."
What context am I missing?

But due to the intellectual and creative nature of programming it would be morally fairer to share the copyright and some small percentage of royalty, if applicable.

Any argument to morality is obviously subjective, and I disagree. I was employed to write programs for my employer. I knew the terms going in, and I agreed to them. They bargain struck included transfer of ownership. If it didn't, the company may well not have been willing to strike the same bargain. I see nothing immoral with the current setup.

If on being employed anything I'd previously written was claimed by my employer; or they continued to claim code I wrote after I left employment; or they claimed code I wrote in my own time, unaffected to their business, that would all raise moral arguments.

I'm baffled why you are so negatively against the idea. Even if more companies adopted it, or the laws were somehow changed (I can't see how), it would have no effect on your contract or income.

Of course it would.
You are saying that publishers/companies should pay a proportion of royalties to writers/programmers. You think they are just going to do that on top of the existing fixed prices they have agreed? No, they would reduce the initial fixed fees, so that the expected return was the same. Otherwise, they are just paying more for the same thing.

I am absolutely not proposing an either/or. I'm not proposing an end to programmers or writers for hire. I'm proposing that under EXISTING contracts of employment that the in reality shared nature of the creative works should be recognised.

You have said that the programmers/writers should share the copyright of the work. That is an end to work (for hire/in the course of employment), the very essence of which is that the employer owns the copyright.