This comes out of a blog post I opted not to publish. In it I dealt with more specific copyright issues but decided it was more of a personal attack and instead decided to write something very general about copyright and authors.
A particular website I visit frequently has both content generated by the site owners and content provided by members and published by the site. Some recent changes to the site have many folks in a tizzy and some are understandably upset by the changes.
While doing some digging I found they have an issue where copyright of the works provided by the members isn’t clearly defined. In one place they say the original author still owns the copyright, but in a statement by one of the owners this week they say they own copyright on all materials published on the site.
So now we get to the discussion of what copyright is for those who might be wondering. Copyright is ownership plain and simple. It is ownership of intellectual property (words, pictures, music, etc.) rather than real tangible property (though that may go along with owning copyright). In the bad old days to get copyright you had to register your work with the copyright office. This meant filling out a form and sending in a copy of the work plus a fee. A few weeks/months later you got a copyright notice. Now you could always claim copyright over a work, but it wasn’t enforceable if you hadn’t registered your copyright. Moving forward to 1999 and 2000 we have the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). The DMCA was written to deal with the explosion of electronic content which wasn’t so easy to quantify and register with the copyright office. The DMCA made it possible to claim copyright simply by creating a work. This made it easy for digital content creators to claim copyright over works they created without the hassle of going through the copyright office. It also made it easy to claim copyright as all copyright was implied. By creating a work you had copyright over that work. You didn’t have to write “Copyright…” unless you wanted to as you already owned the copyright to the material.
So where are we today. Well in the case of this particular site, in legal limbo for a start. The authors don’t know if they still own their copyright (though they should). But this goes to the larger issue of creating content and seeking to see it published. As an author you have a few choices. First you might sell it outright to an interested party transferring all copyright to them. This occurs every day in the publishing world. An author writes something, sells it to a publication and it is no longer theirs. Second, you sell the copyright to a publisher for a specific publication but reserve the right to publish it elsewhere after the original publication comes out. This tends to happen most with photographs. However, there is a third kind of possibility. You supply an article to a website (or perhaps it is something you wrote on your blog). It has been published, people read it and like it but you never transferred copyright to the site. This means when a publisher comes calling you have the right to sell your article, picture, etc. if you want without asking permission from the site owner.
What does all this mean. Well it means that the site has to clarify how they are asserting copyright. Are they only copyrighting those materials they produce, or are they saying they own the copyright on all published works on the site. If they are saying they own the copyright to all items published where does it leave the original author. Well if there isn’t a contract which spells out that the site owns the copyright they are pretty much free and clear. They can demand the content be removed and have every right to do so. If there is a contract they are bound by the contract. The big issue here is how the author was compensated. Contracts generally specify compensation (I give you X, in return I get Y). If the contract merely notes the author gave content to the site with nothing in return beyond the publication then no court in the country will uphold the contract as being legally valid.
My suspicion is there aren’t any contracts, so the authors can make any request that want about their content. It would be nice if the site owners would clarify their position on copyright as they have in their statements about the “for profit” nature of the site.
DISCLAIMER: I am not an attorney. I am however someone who worked in the publishing industry for a while and dealt with copyright issues frequently. In addition I worked in the academic sector for almost a decade and dealt with copyright issues there as well. If you have a specific copyright issue you are advised to seek appropriate legal council in your jurisdiction.
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