> Terry Carroll <carrollt@netcom.com> writes:
>
> > On Tue, 16 May 1995, Frederic Albrecht wrote:
> >
> > > I've been reading this thread for a few days (I just joined the mailing
> > > list since I'm working on a list of operating systems for the PC) and I
> > > wonder how this issue would be adressed if the complaint came from
> > > France. Under French law, anything you write is your property (even if
> > > you sold rights to it to someone else).
> >
> > Pretty much the same in the U.S.
>
> What? In the U.S., the author can sell all the rights if he likes.
> I've done it.
OOPS! I didn't read the post closely enough, and skipped the
parenthetical. You're right, Pat; with some minor exceptions, all of
copyrights are up for sale. The author retains the right to take back
the copyright 35 years later, and certain works have inalienable rights
associated with them, but you're basically right, and I'm not going to
pretend that I was referring to these narrow exceptions to save face.
What I had meant to say was that it is basically the same in the U.S.
that you get a copyright in anything you write without the need for
formalities like notice and registration, etc. But we've gone over that
before.
> > Interesting point. In the U.S., the performer had no right in the
> > performance until very recently (when the US signed onto GATT).
>
> The Screen Actors' Guild seems to think otherwise.
SAG is wrong, then, unless we're talking about two different things
somehow. The right to a recorded live performance by the performer (as
opposed to the author) was not subject to copyright until passage of the
Uruguay Rounds Agreement Act of 1994. (Technically, it still isn't
protected by copyright, since the performance is not a "work," but that is
a real technicality, since all the remedies for copyright are available.)
The new provision is in U.S. Code Title 17, section 1101.
-- Terry Carroll | "Clearly, this invention provides the world's Santa Clara, CA | first weapons simulator for use by motorists." carrollt@netcom.com | - U.S. Patent No. 5,314,371 (May 24, 1994)
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