Posts Tagged ‘Legal’

111 items.

Marvel vs Kirby: Audio Smackdown

by Colleen Doran on November 8th, 2011
Posted In: Blog, Culture, Comics, Comics History, Creator Resources, copyright/trademark, Creator Resources, Legal

The Comics Journal blog has audio of the discussion between Steve Bissette “…founding faculty member of the Center for Cartoon Studies” and outspoken creator rights advocate, and Professor Oliver Goodenough, Professor of Law and Director of Scholarship at the Vermont Law School. “Marvel vs. Jack Kirby: Legal Rights and Ethical Might”.

I’m just going to quote from the comments, because I’m going to the other side of the planet and have no time to blog responsibly.

The key to the case was the attempt by Toberoff to show, that like Siegel and Shuster, Kirby brought characters to the publisher he created at home, by himself, with no understanding he would be paid.
That is why the judge said Marvel’s case “stands or falls on his (Lee’s) testimony.”

Countering this was the testimony of Lee who categorically said he alone created every single character and basic plot by himself, and then assigned the cartoonists to illustrate his concepts.

That is why the judge said Marvel’s case “stands or falls on his (Lee’s) testimony.”

└ Tags: , , ,
Comments Off

CREATOR RIGHTS LINKS: Getting Paid, Getting Robbed

by Colleen Doran on October 11th, 2011
Posted In: Blog, Creator Resources, copyright/trademark, Creator Resources, Creator Resources, Legal, Creator Resources, Money Management, Creator Resources, Publishing

I’m a bad blogger for not updating more frequently, so here’s a linkpalooza of cool things to read.

Boy do I need to clean out my bookmarks.

At the New York Times, “Begging for Your Pay”.

He waited on $31,000 through November 2009; by February, the company still owed him $20,000. Wisdom, who said he had had a perfect credit score until then, racked up over $20,000 in credit card debt, and his bank raised his interest rates to 30 percent. He was paying more than $500 a month in credit card interest, and withdrew from his retirement accounts to make ends meet.

I feel your pain, dude. It’s been over a year, and a producer still hasn’t forked over the dough.

China and Intellectual Property.

Bootleg copies of the “Dark Knight” and Shenzen sweatshops churning out fake Louis Vuitton bags are only part of the problem. Last March, the United States International Trade Commission banned imports of cast steel railway wheels made by the Chinese group Tianrui. Tianrui had hired nine employees from the Chinese licensee of Amsted Industries of Chicago, a maker of railway parts. They came with an armful of trade secrets that allowed Tianrui to muscle into the business.

What really happened to htmlcomics. You may recall I had a run-in with this scary dude, a convicted felon pirating comics, some time ago. He followed up my post several times with some vaguely threatening emails, odd complaints I had lied about his kindly cooperation with my request he stop pirating my work (read the link and decide for yourself,) and demands to remove anything I had ever said about him online, all of which I ignored. I did not publish any of his later emails, especially after learning what he did to this cop who pissed him off. That’s so not normal. I just handed the letters to my attorney.

He also made the odd claim that he had been released from “all charges”. Whatever charges he thinks they were, the real story is that he was sued by the federal government and had his servers and websites permanently shut down and forfeited. You can read all about it at Copyhype.

Copyhype’s article also lays to rest some of the online cheering from people who claim they had the dude shut down via their blog posts or something. The investigation began in 2009.

The case of htmlComics.com is, as far as I know, the first time a domain name has been forfeited under 18 USC § 2323(a) as property “used, or intended to be used, in any manner or part to commit or facilitate the commission of” criminal copyright infringement.

And while my bottom line has gone up considerably since I first wrote about the perils of digital book filching, I’m chalking that up to the many thousands I spent on advertising, having the website redone, and other rather expensive incentives, not to mention my ubiquitous web presence.

I’m also working with Image Comics to create A Distant Soil digital books. The first 14 issues of A Distant Soil were not published by Image, and they are undergoing a major cleanup operation. They also require new covers and will have some new content. They should be available soon, but this art is more than 20 years old, and digital files did not exist back in the day. We’re doing major restoration here.

I also hope you enjoy the online comic experience at my official website. It’s been fun bringing it to you.

Jaron Lanier declares “Web 2.0 is utterly pathetic.”

“Musicians and journalists are the canaries in the coalmine,” says Lanier, “but, eventually, as computers get more and more powerful, it will kill off all middle-class professions.”

At Plagiarism Today: “Why I don’t Fear Chilling Effects.” Chilling Effects sometimes posts the personal information of people who file takedown notices for copyright infringement online. I think that’s kind of creepy. Here’s another take on the matter.

First, the name Chilling Effects, to many copyright holders, sounds very accusatory. Though Chilling Effects “aims to support lawful online activity against the chill of unwarranted legal threats” it does so by being an impartial database of notices. Not every notice in Chilling Effects is “chilling” free speech in any way, in fact, the vast majority are not.

└ Tags: , ,
5 Comments

Legal Issues in Contemporary Art: Copyright Class

by Colleen Doran on September 16th, 2011
Posted In: Blog, Creator Resources, copyright/trademark, Creator Resources, Education, Creator Resources, Legal

Legal Issues in Contemporary Art:
Copyright
__

*2.5 CLE credits: 1.5 Professional Practice and 1 Skills (Approved for Non-Transitional and Transitional Attorneys)

When: Monday, September 26, 2011. 4 – 6:30pm
Where: VLA, 1 East 53rd Street, NY, NY 10022 (Auditorium) Map it!

With the recent increase in copyright issues and lawsuits, visual and performing artists need to be aware of copyright laws and the legal issues that may affect their practice and the presentation of their art work. This class will focus on copyright law, with a primer on some of the more pressing legal concerns for artists today, such as the distinction between ideas and expression, the use of appropriated images and text, as well as fair use. The class will refer to legal cases in order to illustrate key concepts.

This VLA workshop is open to artists, arts administrators, and serves as an introduction to copyright law for admitted attorneys.

This class will be taught by Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento, Esq., VLA’s Associate Director.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

What people are saying about this class:

“Very creative and engaging presentation of important issues in copyright.”

“Very well taught class with extremely useful information.”

“Thank you Sergio. This was a great introduction to VLA. You made the subject very interesting even after a very long day.”

………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Fees (there is a late registration fee of $10 if you register the day of the class):
$15 Artist (VLA member)
$25 Artist (VLA non-member)
$75 Legal Professional (VLA member)
$100 Legal Professional (VLA non-member)
$50 VLA YAM’s (Young Associate Members)
*Free for All You Can Learn Pass

To register, please complete and fax this registration form. All registration fees are non-refundable. For more information, please call Joni Todd at 212.319.2787 x10, or e-mail her at jtodd@vlany.org.

└ Tags: , ,
Comments Off

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.

└ Tags: , , ,
5 Comments

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.

└ Tags: , , ,
5 Comments