Re: An alternative to levies on copyright

> With software, the person who writes the software isn't necessarily
> the copyright holder - that privelege goes to the employer.

and it's worth noting that massively-collaborative works present an
issue for any "no transferability of rights" rule (without which a "no
exclusive deals" rule is largely pointless, since the publisher then
only offers even half-way decent deals on condition of transfer, just as
they presently do for exclusivity).

Any software of any significant scale is the work of many coders; if I
can't transfer my rights to my work-for-hire, my contract will have to
insist that I will always allow my employer to use what I write on the
job.  Such insistence doesn't break the "no exclusivity" rule, but does
effectively ensure only my employer can ever hope to have the permission
of all contributors - thereby achieving exclusivity.  In the case of a
software house I'm not hugely fussed by this - as long as the only
monopolistic privileges granted in relation to software are about
copying, as opposed to re-use of the ideas contained therein - since any
bunch of the contributors who could sensibly have said "well it's mostly
by us" (so our wish to grant someone else permission to publish our work
will being thwarted by our having lost track of some ex-colleagues (who
moved on to other jobs) or by our (perhaps, by now, ex-) employer
keeping at least some other contributors on their side) would equally be
able to get together and write something better (now that they've had
the experience derived from the first time round).

However, the same rationale applies to recordings of orchestral works.
If they're to be published at all, the consent of all players is
required; and anyone trying to put together a deal for republication
later is going to have a hard time finding them all (some will have
moved on) and getting them all to agree to the deal - especially if the
first publisher is twisting a few arms.

An orchestra *could* set up a collective rights-management entity that
all members of the orchestra contractually agree to allow to use their
collective works; then that entity (under the democratic control of the
orchestra's members) would be able to do a deal with a publishing house
to release the work, while retaining the authority to later do a deal
with someone else in relation to the same work.  To make that work, the
orchestra would need to ensure the other parties with rights in the
recording of their performance (the sound technicians, producers,
etc. who are normally provided by the publisher) have also granted the
orchestra's entity liberty to use the recording; and the orchestra would
need to ensure they had a copy from which they could subsequently make
copies (i.e. no DRM-crippling).  That would all require orchestras to be
fairly hard-nosed and forceful in their bargaining; and I can just see
how Big Music would be quick to find orchestras not yet that organised
and offer to "carry that organisational burden for" them, so as to end
up being in control of the recording; after they've done this with a few
orchestras (and while they're still keeping them sweet) they'll be sure
to threaten any organised orchestras with taking their business
elsewhere if the orchestra insists on the things called for above;
i.e. they'll apply market pressure to restore the status quo.

So what's needed is not just legislative change, but a suitable aliquot
of bloody-mindedness from authors, performers and the general public ;^>

	Eddy.