At 06:04 PM 7/08/2013, Kim Holburn wrote: >like from the author in return for regular payments of royalties. In >other words ... the author would retain the copyright. > >I don't believe so. Authors rights were only under sufferance.
When a 3rd party is involved, say a publisher, the rights are whatever are negotiated in the contract. The author holds the rights automatically upon creation -- not the state or anyone else. It's up to the creator to decide what they want to do with those rights -- assign them to a 3rd party, give the work away for free, destroy it, edit it, make derivative works from it (film from the book, e.g.). Publishers are fighting a losing battle -- very hard. Their business model is in its dying days, just like news outlets and other media. There is a guy on Kickstarters who is crowd-sourcing funding to publish anthologies (check out Clockwork Universe: Steampunk vs Aliens), for example, because publishers aren't doing it any more. And people are publishing all sorts of stuff via Amazon and Smashwords with little editorial involvement (for good or ill on that front!), and retaining copyright just fine. It's just hard-copy printing and distribution that publishers are needed for any more. They don't even do much marketing. Authors are expected to do that themselves. It's pretty rank out there right now. So I don't have much sympathy for whoever is fighting against the ALRC. Jan Melbourne, Victoria, Australia [email protected] blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/ business: http://www.janwhitaker.com Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth. ~Madeline L'Engle, writer _ __________________ _ _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
