Re: (c) permission on multi-authored works [was: Charging the Charger]

   A few posts ago, I promised to look into a legal question about permissions 
   on multi-authored works.  Checking with an IP law scholar provided a pretty 
   good clear answer. 

   She replied:
   Only one [needs to grant permission].  Either author can license the 
   work.  If I write the lyrics and you write the music to a song, either of 
   us can license the song, you can license the lyrics (even though I wrote 
   all of them and you wrote none of them) and I can license the music.  We 
   have a duty to account to each other for any proceeds.
   So, opportunities for licensing are quite flexible. Hope this helps clarify.

I find this a little hard to believe.  The clearest question is raised
in the case of compilation copyright.  If an editor compiles a volume
of papers by several authors, the editor holds a copyright in the
compilation, but not in any of the individual articles.  If your
statement about music and lyrics is true, then to say that "either
author can license the work" would seem to imply, in the case of
compilations, that an editor can redistribute works legally just by
combining them with other works.  But we know this isn't true.

In the case of the lyricist and the composer, are they required to
"work together"?  I'm not sure this would help, but I can't imagine
any (other) reason why it would be true that either author can license
any part of the work.  Say I write some poetry - if someone else puts
my poems to music, they can suddenly distribute them legally?  I very
much doubt that they could do so without permission.

Like I said above, I'm not sure how "working together" (whether
physically or just under the same license) helps matters in cases like
these.  Maybe if the authors words are inextricably intertwined, then
it would might make sense for either individual to be able to
relicense the work.  But in the case of clear sections, or
uniquely-authored patch sets, it really doesn't make much sense to me.

(True, on GPL code, one puts every person's copyright statement -
which seems to suggest that the whole thing is in the copyright of
each person.  But the GPL says that no-one downstream can relicense
under non-GPL terms.  The only way to relicense under non-GPL terms is
to have a "clean copyright".)

Saying "we have a duty to account to each other for any proceeds"
seems to imply the existence of some contract - unless you can cite
specific passages of the copyright code or case law that prove me
wrong about this and the other stuff, the issue will be on thin ice
(for me).