Magicalia and the YahooGroups

In article , John Stevenson writes

Was this a US case? If so, it has zero value as a precedent in the UK.

David

I did not write that.

Peter Fairbrother

They did not win outright - there were two completely contradictory US precedents. In the 11th Circuit case they said the freelance photographers had to be paid, in the 2nd Circuit case they said they didn't have to be! The Supremes then declined to comment, as they often do in copyright cases, so the present US situation is ... confused.

NG are selling CD's, some freelance photographers are getting paid and some aren't. Go figure.

Those are American precedents, not UK.

US copyright law is different to UK law - FBSR is not the same as FUSSR with the countries swapped - in general under UK law FBSR only gives the right to publish once, whereas under US law FUSSR also gives "privileges of revision", and UK law does not.

Furthermore, under UK law converting a printed work to electronic or CD form is considered to be adapting the work, which is the exclusive right of the copyright owner. This is not so in the US, where there is no such right.

I am unable to confidently predict the result of a similar UK case, where a FBSR magazine was reproduced in toto on CD, and I don't think anyone else is, but I think that it would very likely be to the effect that freelance contributers should be paid, and almost certainly so for post-1988 Act works.

It is after all now common to sell electronic and CD rights seperately from serial rights, and these would not (now) normally be included in FBSR sold to a paper publication.

Assuming they have FBSR only, Magicalia probably could print more copies of the old magazines without anyone's agreement, as this would probably (but not necessarily, the issue is complex especially after such a long time out-of-print) be considered only one publication of the work.

Also note that even if the case succeeded it would not affect any rights of the authors to publish their work elsewhere.

In article , Peter Fairbrother writes

The correctness of Peter's view is supported by the fact that British book publishers (at least in our limited experience) now include a specific clause in the licence agreement granting them rights to distribution on CD, or any other electronic form now known or ever invented. It could be argued that if the "old-fashioned" agreement already gave them this right, such a clause would not be needed (or of course it could just be a "belt and braces" precaution by their lawyers).

David

The british telephone book is an example - some years ago people were selling copies of the UK telephone directories on CD - searchable ones, so you could do RDQ's (reverse telehone directory enquiries, ie find a name and address from a telehone number). BT sued and said their copyright was being infringed, and won at least partly because the CD had been OCR'd from their directories, and the arrangement of infarmation was their copyright.

If someone came up with a different arrangement and collected the names themselves it would probably be okay from that point of view - even though the BT arrangement is just names in alphabetical order!

BT however also claimed that the collection was their copyright, ie the collection of UK names and telehone numbers - I do not recall whether that point stood up, but it could have.

BT now publish the UK telephone books on CD, very expensive, about £150 as opposed to the £20 for the earlier CDs, but it is in theory (but not in practice) unsearchable - however searchable directories of most other european countries are available at around the £20 mark.

Yes - these rights are typically not included in FBSR though, and are mentioned seperately in a typical contract.

plus indefinite non-exclusive printed and electronic rights, and also indefinite non-exclusive CD publication rights

Academic cryptology, the study of encryption codes and ciphers.

There is no money in publication, as the number of copies initially sold is less than 1,000, mostly to university libraries, who usually buy them automatically as soon as they are published - subsequent sales are very small, and copies are available for free from me anyway.

I don't get paid anything from the publishers (usually Springer-Verlag) even for the first printing, never mind reprints!

Sorry - Quoting went funny somewhere. The point *I* was trying to make was that we had already had feedback somewhere that ME and MEW prior to the last couple of changes of owners had contracts in place that meant that they could not simply copy content for other uses, it needed to be cleared with every author. David Fenner had confirmed the situation prior to his retirement from MEW and this was one of the reasons for the new owners wanting to replace the contracts - that and to reduce payments ;) Now if someone has information to the contrary ......

Peter, Thank you and I stand corrected.

Can anyone explain how various newspapers like the Times etc do CD's then given they fall under British law ?

On a slightly different angle, Magicalia have recently revised their contracts to authors but still only relate to printed rights. Surely the time is now here to bring First Electronic rights into the field before they get left behind altogether ?

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

Visit the new Model Engineering adverts page at:-

In article , Peter Fairbrother writes

A real labour of love, then!

David

First copyright belongs to the employer, unless there is a written agreement to the contrary.

See s11 of the 1988 Act:

I _think_ this was true of older work too, but don't quote me :)

Yes; I was mis-remembering which way round it was . Should check facts before flexing fingers.

Actually the situation is quite complex. A work is only produced in the course of employment if the nature of the work in question fits within the employee's job description. If it does not, he still owns the copyright.

However, there is one bit of what you say that is not quite correct. If the writing of the work does fall within the author's job description, but the employer agrees he may keep the copyright, this agreement does not need to be in writing (an exception to the normal rule, since the copyright does not exist until he has written the work - Noah v Shuba, [1991] FSR 14).

The position for self-employed consultants is even more complex.

Probably getting a bit abstruse here.

David

I'm not entirely sure, but for eg letters and reader's contributions etc the papers generally insist that you either assign them the copyright or licence all rights on a non-exclusive basis - for freelance work published since the introduction of the online version they will also demand electronic and CD etc rights.

In general copyright in articles by staff writers, and commissioned works, ie most of the CD, will also be owned by the paper, and only older freelance work will be in any question. That's partly why eg Reuter's reports are re-written by staff writers - the new form of words is then owned by the paper, and the facts in the Reuter's report are not subject to copyright.

For older stuff by freelance writers where copyright is not clear they may make a minimum good-faith effort (look it up in a couple of databases) to find and pay the copyright holder, and then just wait for people to demand royalties, which they then pay.

That would be lawful, and I doubt any royalties would amount to much as the material involved would be only a small part of the whole CD, but I don't know for sure if that's what they do - I don't know of any cases, but they would not normally reach a Court.

On a US note, a few years ago the NY Times was accused of blacklisting freelance writers who demanded fees for work previously published in the paper and then published electronically - there was a US Supreme Court case in June 2001 that said that they had to pay the freelance writers for subsequent publication in electronic form (on the 'net, not on CD).

This is not quite the same situation as the photographs in National Geographic, partly because photographs are different to written works, and partly because publishing on a CD is different from publishing electronically - in the US publishing a CD of an entire magazine could be considered still to be first publication (if you accept the 2nd Circuit's NG decision) due to the implied inclusion of "privileges of revision", which is US legalese and doesn't actually mean anything like it sounds like, in US (but not in UK) first serial rights.

I'd have thought so. First electronic, CD, and all other media yet to be invented, rights.

David, You do know the story which according to my records starts in

Just a couple of thoughts

In article , ravensworth2674 writes

Was that a reply to my post? My threading indicator suggests it is, but I can't quite see the connection - I was commenting on some words by Peter, of general relevance.

David

suggests it is, but

Sorry but the exuberance of verbosity is confusing an old soul. I am simply waiting for the pearls which surely will come when one gets to carefully examining the variations which have taken place between one writer who started life on 30th Dec 1896( I was 2 days out) and his death after a short illness on 3rd May 1970.

There are so many entrances, exits, actors and whatever that it is really looking like a French farce. This is one copyright holders history- and there are obviously more copy right holders.They are going to be far more difficult to locate. Yes? So we start at Somerset House and go through the Probates?

Norm