[pp.int.general] Protest certain musicians?

[np]

Brian McNeil wrote:
> To me, trying to frame this in terms I understand, this would be; "the
> law permits an 'author' to grant an exclusive license where - perhaps on
> the basis of a fixed lump-sum payment - he/she/they disavow further
> interest in income from that instance of his work."
>   
Well - more or less that's how it works. You as an author can grant
someone exclusive usage/realization rights. That means you're completely
out of the loop when it comes to further payments.

> Is that accurate? I know it might not be what the PP wants. But, if it
> is then the Beatles -> Michael Jackson situation is equally viable in
> Germany.
>   
Yes, in practice it is. There are some important restrictions though:

First the german Urheberrecht has a clause which is known as the
"bestseller clause" (§ 32 Abs. 1 UrhG) . In short it sais that your
compensation must be adequate. This protects the authors from cases
where they have granted exclusive rights in the past and later some
third party starts to earn silly and unexpected amounts of money with
your work.

Whatever "adequate" means is not defined though.

Second, a part of the Urheberrecht (Kunsturheberrecht / Moral Rights)
which does not exist in the USA copyright grants some rights to the
authors that can't be transfered.

This includes among other things a clause that authors can use to
prevent his work to be defaced. Whatever that means in practice is again
not clearly defined. Some authors have successfully exploited this
clause to prevent digitalization of their works for example.


Btw - it's a dilemma that these moral rights are part of our
Urheberrecht. When we talk about restricting the length of copyright the
first thing most authors see is not the financial aspect but they fear
the loss of the right to be named as an authors, their rights to prevent
defacements and so on.


Cheers,

    Nils Pipenbrinck
    Member of the PPD Germany/Hamburg