[Coco] Republishing Magazines

[Neil Morrison]

I believe that all copyrights (and patents) are a right, granted by
the State on behalf of the citizenry and intended to benefit both
authors of works and the public at large. I'd like to see a system
whereby the rights revert to the State at some point and may be
licensed by the State as a revenue stream. That way the author would
get almost all of the income at the beginning and would get a
declining amount over time, varied by the value and popularity of the
work. The whole way these systems work is a hodgepodge, so that we
see the guy who invented the intermittent windshield wiper having to
sue each auto company one at a time, and the inventors of major
things like Chester Carlson (Xerox copiers) and Philo T. Farnsworth
(Television Image Dissector) basically get very little of the income
whereas Bill Gates gets unlimited co-operation from law enforcement
to protect even his obsolete software in perpetuity.

Neil

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dennis Bathory-Kitsz" <bathory at maltedmedia.com>


> Contracts almost always cover print runs, and frequently detail the
exact
> change in payment for second, third, fourth (etc.) runs. It would
only
> become fuzzy if the contract omitted this, and I've never seen one
that
> forgets this key clause. It's important to both author and
publisher that
> this be detailed carefully....