SC - Copyright and Earthlink

[Morgan Cain]

Hi, y'all:

Alban is correct; I was out-kingdom and pretty much offline all weekend.  Got back and have not read all the messages as yet, but have already contacted Earthlink Legal to ask my colleagues if the material is just badly worded or what they were thinking.

When a similar furor erupted over Yahoo! a few weeks ago, with very similar language, I pointed out that you really need to make an affirmative transfer of your gross copyrights for it to be effective, so language making an assumptive transfer would probably be a nullity.  [15 U.S.C. Secs. 201(d) and 204]

My analysis is that any mandatory transfer of rights in conjunction with a use agreement is in direct violation of the U.S. Copyright Act Section 201(e).  But I have not discussed the matter with my colleagues at Earthlink to figure out if the complained-of paragraph is ineffectual or merely badly written.

                   ---= Margo Lynn *


* because Morgan doesn't know from 21st-Century copyright law....
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