WE HOLD THESE RIGHTS TO BE UNIVERSAL — by Steve Nadis
I’ve been wasting a lot of time of late (which should come as no surprise to readers of this blog who don’t know me when I’m not wasting time), filing claims for an $18 million writer’s class action lawsuit. This has involved tearing apart my office, looking up contracts I’ve signed over the past decade or two with various publishers. One I stumbled across in my research even had the audacity to seek the entire copyright “THROUGHOUT THE UNIVERSE (emphasis added), in any and all media and forms of publication.” I guess you’d have to call those terms rather expansive. Being farsighted, the publishers realized that limiting the contract to “throughout the galaxy” wouldn’t have done it, as tens of billions of years from now, the Milky Way is destined to merge with other members of the so-called “Local Group,” rendering that language (“throughout the galaxy”) ambiguous.
Posted by
at
13:38:04
It’s finding a delivery system to get stories from the Andromeda galaxy that has proved to be a problem for publishers. They’ve tried to get articles from the much closer sludge under Europa’s ice, but their syntax is atrocious.
Hi Doc, thanks for the note. Yes, there are problems with universal publishing. But if nobody aimed high (or big), where would we be?
Wow, they have great lawyers. Does W know about them? He’s looking for Supremes right now.
Thanks for the note, Roses. That’s a darn good question. All I can say is that, as usual, I wish I had some answers.
Your blog is impressive,it is always in my mind after i read it.