Is it any wonder that writers feel like they are at the bottom of the food chain? All they have of any value in this world is their work, and writers have--of necessity--become very protective of their work. Everyone else in the world, it sometimes seems, wants to take another slice of the pie and leave barely a crumb left for the poor starving writer.
Take, for example, electronic rights. Shouldn't writers receive fair compensation for their work when it is made available for download? Shouldn't writers be paid everytime someone downloads their work or everytime their work is included in a database? Since electronic rights were not mentioned in many older contracts, shouldn't those rights belong to the writer and not the publisher until such time as they are negotiated and the writer paid for a license? What do you think?
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I think yes, writers should be paid for every download, or at least be paid using some model that accounts for electronic downloads (such as a set fee or salary for a certain time period of anticipated downloads - a year, let's say). I'm not so sure about databases. I think it depends on what the database is used for. If it will eventually be used commercially as an index or catalog by a company that then sells or rents the work, then yes. If we are talking about a database used at a library, or a database used personally to track your favorite books, then no.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, contract law dictates that something left out of a contract generally means it is not allowed. Until that line of thinking changes (which is along the lines of guilty until proven innocent?), then I think it will be up to authors and their associations to really fight for those rights.