Copyright and Contributions

Old Copyright Law says that when you hire someone to work for you as a contractor, if you have control - you own the copyright. For example, say I want to hire someone to write a play and everything in the play, I must approve. I have the final word and I make any and all decisions as the author and the person in the ultimate control. But if I work with collaborators, they become my co-authors.

What about when there are several contributors who are subject to a final decision by the main editor, like I'm a writer for Social Media Law Student and I am subject to a final decision by Rex Gradeless. Are the writers for SMLS, co-authors, joint authors, or independent contractors entitled to all rights in our own work? How does copyright law define who owns SMLS and what rights contributors have?

The Seventh Circuit recognized this problem in Gaiman v. McFarlande (360 F. 3d 644) when it held that Neil Gaiman, a comic book script writer, sued Todd McFarlane, an illustrator of comic book characters for Copyright Infringement. Gaiman was a contracted employee who McFarlane hired to create a script for an issue of The Spawn. Needless to say, the court found that Gaiman and McFarlane had to work together to creator the characters in the comic book and without one author's creative work, the whole entire work would not have existed. The court ultimatey held a joint authorship in the work and were both entitled to rights under Copyright law.

From this analysis, I can pressume that if I work with the author of a blog on a post, we are co-authors because without both of our input, the entire whole would not be realized. So, if Rex Gradeless and I sat down and came up with concepts for a blog post then we both input ideas, opinions and changes, this would be a joint work and therefore subject to joint authorship. However, Rex and I don't sit down each week when I write my blog contributions, but he does edit all of the blog contributions. Does Rex own rights in my contributions?

In Community for Creative Non-Violent v. Reid (490 U.S. 730), the Supreme Court held that an artist, Reid, hired by an organization, the CCNV, was entitled to joint authorship of a statute he designed and created for CCNV. The court reasoned that Reid was an independent contractor and not CCNV's employee, therefore he was not subject to "work for hire" status under Copyright Law. The court reasoned that CCNV did not provide Reid with any of the benefits or opportunities it had provided its other employees and therefore could not claim sole rights in the statute. The court also reasoned that CCNV did not have sole control over the creation of the statute but accepted input and contributions made by Reid. The court stated this was sufficine to allow Reid the opportunity to rights of co-authorship.

When looking at the concept of Copyright in this sense I wonder if a court would evaluate the entire whole or each individual article. For example, without my contributions to SMLS, SMLS would still exist. However, the whole of the website would not be realized as it is today without my contributions. But without Rex's editing, would my contributions as a whole be all that different from their current state?

It's important to note that I do not have any rights of authorship in SMLS. I own only what I post, even if edited by Rex. If I had control and access to change parts of the website then my statuts as a writer with rights solely in my work would change. Whereas, if Rex removed paragraphs from my articles and added his own input, his rights in my work would change as well. However, Rex changes very little in my posts and I do not have any control or access to changing SMLS as a website. But I think it's interesting to note how easily the lines of authorship, joint authorship and co-authorship can be blurred when you work in a collaborative, contributory setting. Any thoughts?