Re: License violation in "new" Plex86
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Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
| Nathanael Nerode <neroden@twcny.rr.com> writes:
|
|
|>| So, looking at the decision of the Gaiman/McFarlane case, that doesn't
|>| appear to be the case: despite the sequential nature of comic book
|>| production (storyine -> script -> editor -> art -> publication), the
|>| characters were regarded as very clear joint works by the court.
|>
|>Ah, but there was no intermediate publication, which may be the actual
|>distinction. :-P If the script had been published and then the comic
|>book had been based on the published script, without consultation with
|>the script author (except to get a license from the copyright holder to
|>make the 'adaptation'), I expect it would have been treated
|>differently.
|
|
| Really? I thought copyright existed from when a work was fixed in
| form, not from publication.
Yes... although that's relatively new in this country, in some sense;
the copyright term traditionally started from the publication date, with
the exception being for works which were registered before publication.
~ It's possible, now that I think about the changes caused by the 1976
Copyright Act, that this is an unsettled area of law. :-P Ugh; I don't
want to think about this any more.
| But maybe the distinction for jointness
| is different.
I really don't know. :-( I just know that the first copyright holder
often does seem to have the ability to prohibit the second copyright
holder from publishing, which seems to be precisely opposite to the
rumblings about 'joint' copyright holders. So there must be some
distinction somewhere....
I suspect that it was traditionally thought to be easy to tell a joint
work apart from a derivative work (which it obviously isn't in the case
of free software); I wonder if there is really a decent legal test at
all. :-P Probably movies are the place to look, since they generally
have the largest number of authors.
|>~ In cases like that, the first copyright holder appears to generally
|>have the right to completely prohibit further publication of the second
|>work, unless the license he gave to the second copyright holder
|>precludes that. :-P Unfortunately, there does seem to be a certain
|>amount of fuzziness in the question of whether something is a joint work
|>or a derived work. :-P
|
|
| Hm. Clearly I need to read more about this.
|
| -Brian
|
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