Pleading the 5th

[Jim Choate]

Yip, yip, yip, Yahoo!!!!!

On Wed, 11 Apr 2001, Daniel J. Boone wrote:

> 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
> 
> 
>