On Apr 10, 7:17 am, delancey <[email protected]> wrote: > Is there a difference between "rights licensing" and "copyright > licensing"?
Yes, they are two totally different and unrelated terms. The copyright is inherent in the piece. It settles either in the author or, in specific "work for hires' scenarios, in the payer. It is, to be simplistic, the deed of ownership to the piece. With ownership you can assign who has rights to use the piece. A normal book contract is an assignment of rights to a publisher to print a book in a certain format. The contract normally also allows subsidiary rights to be licensed. Those rights are numerous and include audio, electronic, foreign, and other editions. The contract is to ensure that the author gets a share of payment for the further assignment of the licensed rights. That means that when the publisher assigns one right, such as electronic publication, it is bound to protect the author from any unauthorized unlicensed use of other rights in that assignment without further recompense. It is the difference between owning a plot of land and the zoning that says only certain types of buildings can be allowed there. You can't just throw around terms like copyright, any more than you can throw around terms like ownership. They have specific meaning in law. Copyright itself is never licensed. It can be sold, as a piece of property is sold. The uses made of a particular copyright is what the publishing industry is. Any publishing contract, including the R-SPEC one, is a discussion of licensing particular rights to a particular individual or corporation for a set period for a set recompense. It is a legal document that must be adhered to by both sides. Once copyright has been established, everything else is a licensed right. This is a crucial basic for the understanding of contracts and the entire foundation of author's rights battles. Copyright itself is seldom the issue. It happens - Google's scanning of in-copyright books is one example. But contract law is a totally different animal than copyright law and you can't mix the two. The Authors Guild was talking contract law. Amazon backed off so quickly because contract law is well established and will bite you. You can try making this into a philosophical argument about copyright. That works fine on the Internet. It will kill you in court. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
