Date: Thu, 04 Mar 2004 23:12:09 -0500
From: Jim Kling <jkling at nasw.org>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Re: Re: Re: WSFA Journalism Projects
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

Sam Lubell wrote:

>At 05:07 PM 3/4/2004 -0500, Jim wrote:
>
>>Ted White wrote:
>>Copyright is automatic. Registering a copyright only simplifies the
>>procedure for bringing up a lawsuit for infringement -- but if you
>>create something and put it in permanent form, it's copyrighted and
>>could be infringed.
>>
>
>Yes, but I've not heard of an editor claiming ownership of the copyright
>for a regular periodical consisting of articles written by multiple
>people.  Either the copyright would belong to the authors of each piece
>(which it actually does) or to the owner of the publication it was
>submitted to assuming no contract was signed handing over certain rights.
>
>Still, this must be a solved problem as plenty of publications have put up
>issues on the web that originally came out before electronic rights would
>have been a contract issue.  Any of the lawyers or writers her know?
>
They solve it by getting permission from the article's copyright owner
-- if the writer signed over the copyright, the publication has it and
can publish it at will. If the author still has it, the publication has
to go back and get rights to re-publish it on the web.

--
Jim Kling
science writer
Rockville, MD
http://nasw.org/users/jkling