Pleading the 5th

[Daniel J. Boone]

I wrote:

> >List owners have nothing to do with, and cannot affect, the intellectual
> >property rights of list contributors.  Your aspirations to the contrary
> >notwithstanding.

and Tim May responded:

> So you're saying that it is impossible to set up a list (or a
> publisher, same difference) where the rights to a work are
> transferred to (purchased by, whatever) the list or the publisher.

No, I'm not saying that, or anything about publishers, nor indeed am I making
any claim about what sorts of lists might be created in the future.  I am
making a legal/factual claim about every mailing list I am aware of to date,
specifically including this one and the one Declan got all snippy about back in
1997 when Hettinga started forwarding posts from it.

To make my claim more precise, I should have said "list owners...cannot
UNILATERALLY affect, the intellectual property rights of list contributors."

> So much for "All works become the sole property of ZYZ Corporation
> upon submission and acceptance."

Indeed.  So much for that.  And good riddance.  Saying something does not make
it so.  ZYX Corporation is notorious for plastering gratuitious self-serving
printed notices all over every painted surface, and tattooing "Authorized
Personnel Only" on the asses of its employees too.  I get so tired of mindless
legal incantation.  Too many lawyers think they are sorcerers and need only
recite powerful-sounding phrases repeatedly in order to achieve desired
results.  Sorry, this mini-rant is not directed at you, but has been brought to
you by the legal departments of America's most respected corporations.

> Property may be transferred. Intellectual property is property. It's
> all in the contract.

Right.  But it's not DECLAN's property unless he wrote it.  And nothing he says
about whose it is affects whose it is, I don't care how many mailing lists he
"owns".  Contracts are not created by unilateral utterance.

The "owner" of a list can spout nonsense until he's blue in the face, but his
nonsense doesn't affect the rest of us unless we agree to it in some quite
formal ways.

-- Daniel J. Boone