You have to remember that Jason Hardy raked AH over the coals concerning the Packs that he released into the wild, so AH being a little miffed about that, I dont see a problem. Plus I believe AH actually asked multiple times from the Catalyst management about it not getting into the book, and he was told it wouldnt get printed.

Note that the question of who owns the copyright, and when, depends upon exactly how the contract is worded.
I have no desire to see, or debate, what Catalyst did write in their contracts. It does sound extremely likely that future freelancers should be aware that Topps people have taught CGL to make sure that their contracts make the writing a work for hire.
(To get an idea of the range, remember that a book contract with a traditional book publisher does NOT make the book a work for hire.)

Yours,
Joel M. Halpern

Contracts for Shadowrun work have been work for hire since at least 1999 and certainly before that, at FASA, FanPro, and Catalyst, Joel. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

i'm not entirely certain at that point if AH had even received a contract for that work.

No it's not a red herring it's clear evidence of Topps' attitude towards copyright and the authors that it works with.

To be clear. He tendered a submission without contract which was then 'accidentally' published on-line. At Wizkid's request he updated it and it continued to be published on-line with attribution as canon without transfer of copyright for over three years. He licensed the work to them on the condition that it was rolled into canon, as a seamless part of the universe per the original FASA submission guidelines, and that he received attribution.

When they reneged on that he sued Topps. Without transfer of copyright the previous publication had created a joint work that he was an equal co-author of.

The question of magnitude does not impact the validity of his claim.

I'm not really here to question the validity of his claim anyway. I'm pointing out what Topps response to that claim demonstrates about Topps and how that attitude appears to have rubbed off on CGL.





How does that amount to not being powerless?

If we owe you $500 your only recourse is to take us to court?

Up until now I had, to some extent, held my tongue with regards CGL because I enjoyed working on the few things I helped playtest and if everything worked out and CGL were exonerated I didn't want to have burned any bridges.

After listening to Randall, I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire.

Hyperbole. Do you think that cease and desist letters are magically self executing? Copyrights and contracts are both enforced by the courts. There are significant differences between the two actions, but it's not as if a copyright claim somehow avoids litigation. By your logic, the freelancers were, are, and always will be completely powerless. I respectfully disagree.

If your concern is that a $500 contract breach is too small to actually pursue, that's probably wrong. Impossible to say without seeing the contracts and knowing where people live, but that sort of thing could conceivably be pursued in a state small claims court, and small claims processes are meant to be streamlined and inexpensive.

I'm going to step back out at this point, as I don't want to get sucked into another Fuchs-eqsue exchange.

I had a contract for PACKS. I had a contract for almost everything, eventually.

Good, because the court ruled on that already, in favor of Topps.

And your point is?

So, I have a question about those specific locations out of 6th World Almanac that you had submitted the drafts for, that had not previously been mentioned in any SR product, but showed up in the PDF release even after you were no longer working with them. Since their policy is now "There was a contract, so it's a work for hire and the copyright has always been ours" they won't have any reservations about including that work in the print version either. Now this is a bit of a simplification, but essentially, your contract says that payment is due to you a certain number of days after the street date of the physical book that your work appears in, doesn't it?

No. While it blatantly obvious that Jason (I presume it was Jason) stripped my drafts down to outlines and handed them to at least one of the new authors with instructions to use those places, they did not (unlike in Corp Guide) use any of my own actual writing. There was a theft of ideas, but not actual material. It was doubleplusungood, at least to me, but not plagiarism.

Which raises and interesting question. If work for hire means that TOPPS owns the copyright of the completed work, what does it say about the ideas before they become completed work?

It says "don't tell them to Randall." You can't copyright an idea, only keep it to yourself.

That the validity of Malcomson's claims is established. They are invalid.

I firmly believe that at least some showrunners and authors troll the online forums for their TV shows/book series and use the "fan speculation" to drive the direction of the story. "Oh, hey, that's even better than what I had planned! Yoink! Mine!"

Thanks Adam. Given that clarity, I apologize for what may have looked like an attempt to muddy the already roiled waters.
Joel

If CGL had consulted Topps' lawyers, I'm guessing they would have told CGL to publish the book with the content he wrote and send him a check as per the contract. That's part of the intent behind the work for hire clause, so that one party can't take another up to the very end of a project then refuse to release the work. Of course the other major part is to create a cut and dry situation of who owns the copyright to what.

Sorry, but this isn't ideal. Small claims court works great if both parties are in the same state, but in this type of freelance work, that's often not the case. Filing an out-of-state small claims suit is much more difficult and often requires you to file in the state where the defendant is and appear in court in that state.

This is a difficult situation for the freelancers. Which is why I consider it extremely important to work with people you trust. Unfortunately, no one I trust and have worked with extensively is currently at Catalyst. And with RNB's recent statement, I can't see any good reason to write for CGL. It puts me--as a freelancer--at too much of a risk. Others can make their own choices, but I advise them to read their CGL contracts very carefully and understand what they are signing before they sign them. You can negotiate the language in a contract before you sign it, especially if you're a freelancer that has a lot of work history (even better if that work history is with CGL).

And please, be very careful about the termination language and the payment conditions. The termination language in the CGL contracts I remember allowed either party to terminate the contract with 15 days prior written request. Nothing wrong with that (in fact, it's good), but be careful if they are still paying freelancers after publication. If the book publishes and you don't get paid, terminating the contract at that point is of far less value.

And what becomes of these work for hire copyrights if the contract is terminated early? Could CGL take the draft of PACKS that they have, for instance, and drop it into Runner's Toolkit with only minor editorial cleanup, and not the full from-the-ground-up re-write that we were expecting earlier? Because I have a feeling that's why Randall's making these statements now, to lay the groundwork for that sort of surprise later on.

I kind of doubt it, if only because I've been obliquely informed that they're going ahead with a new and different take on PACKS (although why they kept the acronym in this specific instance is bizarre to me.) In the case of another product, I was co-writing some rules with Mark Dynna and made it clear upon termination that any drafts or portions of drafts I'd submitted should be considered Mark's work alone, just to be fair to him. There are a few other items - ones I have not released yet, because I want to see what the outcome of the August 9 hearing is - but with the terminations of my contracts they'd be opening themselves up to a lawsuit to use them, whether Randall thinks he has the copyrights or not.

PACKS is being rewritten from the ground up.

Jason H.

Latest PACER updates:
- The proceeding has been transferred from Judge Glover to Judge Overstreet
- The parties are jointly requesting that the currently-scheduled August 9 hearing be moved to October 12, 2010.

These are actually old (16th), but I've not been checking frequently since things have really died down in advance of the hearing. Both parties support the continuance because their attorneys have trial conflicts around the August 9 date, because the "the bulk of the parties [will be] out of the country around that time," and because the new judge doesn't usually hold trials on Mondays.

Well Crime Time is a band listed in Seattle 2072, that at leased to my knowledge never had a cannon reference but I believe Steve Kenson or someone posted asking for band names on Dumpshock and I gave the story of Crime Time and the adventures surrounding the band. So in my book no harm no foul even if it was intentional as I posted about Crime Time all over Dumpshock and all they used was the name anyways so for all I know its someone else Crime Time band and not my ork rapper.

Can I ask a dumb question? I don't know anything about the business of RPG or freelance writing. What kind of payscale are freelancers getting? I imagine that it varies widely, depending upon the quality and breadth of the material (e.g., a chapter pays less than an entire book).

Long before Seattle 2072, CrimeTime first appeared in State of the Art: 2063, number three in the top ten albums of 2062. AFAIK, Steve Kenson wasn't involved in the SOTA63.