Archive for the ‘Contracts and Copyrights’ Category

Alert: Website with Copyrighted works (in Spanish)

SFWA members with Spanish language editions may want to check out this Web site: http://book0dd.blogspot.com/ Which is offering quite a large number of books for download. We’ve verified that the site is offering what looks like homemade OCR’d versions of some of our members books plus many additional SF and Fantasy titles. If you find […]

Sample DMCA notice for reading-kicks-ass.net

The website http://reading.kicks-ass.net/ contains a significant amount of material that is recognizably copyrighted by our members.    Often sites which post material without permission are outside the United States and governed by different copyright rules.  In this instance the hosting company’s policy explicitly prohibits distribution of copyrighted materials. Legally, DMCA notices must come from the […]

Podcast: Google Book Settlement at WFC

At World Fantasy there was a one-hour panel on the Google Book Settlement with Russell Davis, Karen Wester Newton, Charles Petit, Jay Lake, Christopher Kastensmidt, and Dan Gamber moderating. This is a podcast of the full panel discussion.

Rights and Copyright

Copyright, literally, is “the right to copy.” It guarantees the authors of creative works–including books, artworks, films, recordings, photographs–the exclusive right for a set period of time to allow other people to copy and distribute the work, by whatever means and in whatever media currently exist. It also prohibits copying and distributing without the author’s permission. You own copyright by law, automatically, as soon your work is fixed in tangible form–i.e., the minute you write down the words.

Book Authors’ Bill of Rights

This document has been endorsed by the Romance Writers of America (RWA), Novelists, Inc., Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. (SFWA), and Western Writers of America, Inc. (WWA), representing a total of nearly 11,000 writers. Ratified version (2002) While affirming the freedom of every writer to negotiate in his or her own best […]