Archive for ‘Legal’

128 items.

Google Books Settlement – Bad News for Billionaire Looters

by Colleen Doran on August 18th, 2011
Posted In: Blog, Creator Resources, copyright/trademark, Creator Resources, Creator Resources, Legal

The Google Books Nightmare. Read all about it here:

For a paltry settlement of $60 per book, Google claimed digital publishing rights with or without author consent as a part of a 300 page settlement with 200 pages of amendments, written in such a way as to virtually guarantee that almost any author would not see their $60 for…well, goodness knows when. The contract was a NET agreement.

The case has been winding its way through the courts for years. And it looks bad for poor Google. A recent court case has probably killed any chance of a settlement. The Department of Justice has repeatedly kicked this one back already.

New York Law School’s James Grimmelmann didn’t mince words. “The Google Books settlement—any settlement—is now dead,” he noted. “There is no square one: this case is going back to litigation.”

Review the famous Tasini case. Tasini is also involved in the recent fight against multi-millionaire moocher Ariana Huffington, whose sale of The Huffington Post netted her a cool $315 million, and her team of unpaid bloggers…well, lots of unpaid.

The seven-justice majority opinion penned by Justice Ginsburg found that “[b]oth the print publishers and the electronic publishers … have infringed the copyrights of the freelance authors.” In the end, the court concluded “that the Electronic Publishers infringed the Authors’ copyrights by reproducing and distributing the Articles in a manner not authorized by the Authors and not privileged by sec. 201(c). We further conclude that the Print Publishers infringed the Authors’ copyrights by authorizing the Electronic Publishers to place the Articles in the Databases and by aiding the Electronic Publishers in that endeavor.”

I’m thinking this may be one of the (many) reasons people are turning from blogging to link sharing activities like Twitter. You can still get your point across without a lot of labor, share your info or ideas, and not make some uber-blogger rich off your hours of effort. A 140 character tweet is a lot less effort than a blog post.

This is just the beginning. People are seeing the techies make all the money and treating the art/writing labor like dirt.

They’re beginning to see why the techies are so anxious to get ahold of content. As much of it as they can for free, by convincing as many people as possible that they’re going to make them famous. The only value is in code. There’s no value in 0′s and 1′s, I mean art. Or writing. Or journalism.

Without content, code is just a bunch of numbers.

Huffpo even nominated one of these unpaid bloggers for a Pulitzer, but when that blogger came asking for a paycheck, they told her her work wasn’t worth money.

Worth a Pulitzer, but not worth money.

Pull the other one.

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POD: Print on Demand True Terror Tales

by Colleen Doran on August 12th, 2011
Posted In: Blog, Creator Resources, copyright/trademark, Creator Resources, Creator Resources, Legal, Creator Resources, Publishing

If you are a self publisher, or interested in just putting a few of your own books out there using a Print on Demand service, you must read this post.

Looking to avoid The Man? Want to go your own way and own the whole enchilada? When you sign on with a POD service, you’re just signing on with another The Man.

Some months ago, I posted this (very well trafficked) info on iUniverse and their business practices. If you have not already read it, you should. Here’s a sample:

iUniverse charges you $699 to tell booksellers they can return your book if it doesn’t sell.

Returnable books is standard in publishing, except for the comic book direct sale market. Why on earth anyone would charge you $699 for this service I cannot fathom.

Except they want to make a buck from your ignorance.

First off, you guys gotta realize that once booksellers see your book coming from iUniverse, they know it is self published and are far less likely to stock it. Booksellers know Vanity Press when they see it. OK? Let’s just get that out of the way right now.

Scour the shelves of any retail bookstore outside the direct market, and I defy you to find five copies of anything self published. I’m not saying it never happens, I am saying it is sort of like, I dunno, having a meteor hit your house.

Now author Tracy L. Darity has posted an extremely important overview of the Print on Demand service and their biggest scam: outsourcing work, allowing other printers to handle your book. With no payments to you. Especially if the printer is selling the book as “used”.

Read the whole thing.

Although the on-line agreement has a clause indicating they can allow any third party to assist with fulfillment, the truth is only books I order are fulfilled by them. It appears all other orders i.e. a physical bookstore or on-line seller; the book is most likely printed by a third party source. It is then up to that TPS to notify the POD that they have generated a book. There are two huge problems with this arrangement: 1) if the company printing the book never notifies the original POD, the author will never get paid because there are no checks and balances currently in place to track the activity. 2) The printer, at their discretion, can alter the format of the book. By alter, they can change the physical size, reduce the font size, use a poorer quality paper, or choose not to coat the cover.

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A Plagiarism Carol

by Colleen Doran on August 9th, 2011
Posted In: Blog, Creator Resources, copyright/trademark, Creator Resources, Creator Resources, Legal

This anti-plagiarism video is from Norway, but if you click the CC button that pops up in the bottom menu, you get closed captioning in English! Awesome! Too funny.

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MUST READ: Copyhype on the Kirby Case

by Colleen Doran on August 3rd, 2011
Posted In: Blog, Culture, Comics, Comics History, Creator Resources, copyright/trademark, Creator Resources, Legal, Culture, Comics, Marvel Comics

Super-busy today, but can’t let this go by without urging you to read this extensive and interesting article at Copyhype on the Kirby vs Marvel case.

Like most people, I did not have a grasp on the way 1909 copyright is applied. Most contemporary creators believe that there was no work for hire provision until 1976. But the 1909 law was not wiped out by the 1976 copyright law. Terrance Hart, who is probably the best art and entertainment blogger out there, explains in detailed layman’s terms.

Factors that a court might consider include “the skill required; the source of the instrumentalities and tools; the location of the work; the duration of the relationship between the parties; whether the hiring party has the right to assign additional projects to the hired party; the extent of the hired party’s discretion over when and how long to work; the method of payment; the hired party’s role in hiring and paying assistants; whether the work is part of the regular business of the hiring party; whether the hiring party is in business; the provision of employee benefits; and the tax treatment of the hired party.”

Also, MStein popped in with some comments to the previous Kirby post, with a look at how the Kirby case differs significantly from the Superman rights dispute. A pdf of the relevant documents is here.

It is instructive to read and compare the decision in the Superman case, which explained why Action #1 was not a work for hire and therefore could have the assignments terminated under the 1976 law as the Kirby family contended they should have been able to do.

I’ve angered a few people by stating that I don’t really thing the Kirby heirs have much of a legal case here, but I’m not sure why my stating the obvious is substantive to anyone. I am not a lawyer, so my opinion doesn’t matter much.

The moral issue of whether or not a corporation might see the benefit of granting a substantial gift to the children of a creator is a completely separate issue. I don’t think the art and entertainment industry has a track record of doing that sort of thing.

Creators, the lesson was hard won by our forefathers. Don’t sign away your precious creations without the full understanding of what you are doing. I’ve signed many work for hire agreements, and have never had cause to regret it, because the work for hire contracts I sign with DC Comics are substantially better than anything creators got 50 years ago.

Yet there are many publishers, including small ones who sell themselves as little mavericks fighting against The Man, who will sell you a bill of goods about what they want on the cheap.

You can be Jack Kirby.

Or you can be JK Rowling.

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Marvel Comics vs Jack Kirby Decision: Marvel Wins

by Colleen Doran on July 28th, 2011
Posted In: Blog, Creator Resources, copyright/trademark, Creator Resources, Creator Resources, Legal

Just received 50 page judgment of the United States Southern District Court of NY in Marvel vs Kirby and counterclaim Kirby vs Marvel.

Grants plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment against Kirby, and denies Kirby’s motion for summary judgment against Marvel.

Key quotes:

The expert opinions of Mark Evanier and John Morrow on behalf of Kirby were roundly dismissed as hearsay.

The court paper goes into Marvel’s business practices with regard to creation of comics and payment of freelancers in detail, so it’s worth a read for that alone.

A 1972 agreement signed by Kirby reads:

And a 1986 document signed by Kirby:

VERY important note here: the “instance and expense test” is applied. I could be wrong about how I’m reading this, but that may be very important for future WFH lawsuit decisions.

If you have ever hired an avaricious also-ran to do minor work, this is great news for you if the also-ran climbs out of the woodwork 30 years later and wants the whole copyright enchilada.

If you are a primary creator doing major work for a big publisher: um, not so good.

Speak up if I’m misunderstanding here.

The conclusion:


Plaintiffs (Marvel) motion for summary judgment granted. Defendant (Kirby) cross motion summary judgment denied. Morrow and Evanier export reports are stricken. Plaintiff’s motion to strike Sinnot and Steranko testimony denied.

Click on link below to go to pdf of court decision. Then click on KIRBY DECISION to download PDF.

Kirby decision

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