[MUD-Dev] User-created content ownership

[Jon Lambert]

Richard A. Bartle wrote:
> On 30th March, 2002, Christopher Allen wrote:

>> You hereby grant Skotos a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive,
>> sub-licensable, worldwide, royalty-free license to use,
>> reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, distribute, publicly display
>> and perform any and all of your Participatory Content in all
>> media now known or later developed.

> I'm not a lawyer (because if I were I'd be charging £400 an hour
> to tell you this), but I seem to recall that in the UK you can't
> ever sign away copyright, whether you want to or not.

In the US you can sign away your copyright but ONLY in a written and
signed contract.  Quite similar to how real properties are handled
through titles and deeds.

I think I remarked on this license before.  It is indeed a very
thorough one and well written (for US law anyways), but it does fall
well short of signing away the author's copyright away.

Meaning the author still has copyright, and can continue to publish
that work he/she created elsewhere, can continue to create
derivative works, can continue to license those rights to others,
and can certainly transfer or sign away the copyright to some other
party as if the party they signed this with had never existed.

I've used something very similar to that license to give certain
individuals full use of some of my material (although with no
distribution rights at all).

> There have even been cases where artistic work done for hire
> (ie. paid for) has had an injunction slapped on it because the
> artist's integrity has been compromised.  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

That's a good point and I believe that has happened in the States
with favorable treatment towards the artist as in the UK.  I do
believe these cases were argued on the basis that the author wished
to cancel the license or contract.  Contracts can certainly be
abrogated(?) by one party bringing a successful suit against the
other showing harm.  One of those reasons could well be "artistic
integrity".  IANAL, but I'm pretty sure one would tell you that the
words "perpetual and irrevocable" in a contract always comes with
some unwritten caveats.

--
--* Jon A. Lambert - TychoMUD        Email:jlsysinc at ix.netcom.com *--
--* Mud Server Developer's Page <http://jlsysinc.home.netcom.com> *--
--* If I had known it was harmless, I would have killed it myself.*--



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