If it's a "work for hire" whoever did the hiring owns the
rights until they transfer them to someone else.
Why an author would copy from a piece of writing they knew
they couldn't is beyond me though. And since it's not their
creation ... why would they? They're punching out a story
that was outlined and whose characters are predefined. There
will be some individuality, but not much. That's not what
they're paid for. Plus if they were to recycle something ...
how would anyone know? The new story is going to have new
characters, a new setting, and the author's voice vice the
imitation used for the work for hire.
Try hard enough and I'm sure we can force feed enough what
ifs until any scenario is true or possible. But beyond mental
masturbation I'm not sure I see the point.
-- Anthony Dauer Alexandria, Virginia
Judas is looking for a few Femme Fatales for its next issue:
http://www.adau.net/judas_ezine/
-----Original Message----- From: Mark Sullivan Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2001 7:43 PM
However, aren't there literary "works for hire" (the way many musicians, artists, journalists, etc, were and are screwed)? For instance, who holds the copyright on the post-Pendleton Executioner books? Or other series, for that matter? Who holds the copyrights on all the pseudonymous Brett Halliday/Mike Shaynes? (Does Dennis Lynds own the copyright to all of his works or just to those for characters he created?) I have no idea about the answers to any of these questions, but I bet it's the publisher, not the hired writer.
Don't we have a few writers here who have done pseudonymous work for name franchises like Shayne? Who owns the stories you wrote?
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