h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was wondering if you could explain this section on the terms and conditions... > "Agree to waive any moral rights in your contribution for the purposes of its submission to and publication on the BBC site and the other purposes specified above." What does this mean, in English? {sparked by http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F63734?thread=106007&post=967462#p967462 }

I think I'd like to know this one too...

I thought we signed a non exclusive Copyright agreement, meaning we could still publish any material we published here elsewhere.

Am I wrong?

I thought I could read a decent English (for a foreign speaker, that is) but this one

Who can tell us foreign speakers exactly what that means?

Hint: it's always handy to search something like Google if you want to know the answer to a question like this. I typed 'moral rights' in and got loads of information, which I shall now simply regurgitate (while rewriting it of course - wouldn't want to be breaking the law! ).

The moral right of an author is effectively the right to control what happens to their work. The definition is loose and depends on which country you're hanging out in, but for the purposes of h2g2, this broadly means that you sign away the following types of control over your work:

* The right to accept or decline credit for your work (although we'll always try to include a credit if it makes sense, sometimes it won't, and we need the right to be able to publish work with just a credit to 'the h2g2 Guide', rather than every author... otherwise entries with 50 authors will end up with a credit page that's longer than the entry!)

* The right to prevent the work being altered in any way (obviously with the editing process and the nature of the Guide, we need this right to be waivered)

* The right to control who owns the work (you still own the original, though, so in the case of h2g2 this is only so we can say that the BBC owns the content of the Guide, not so we can prevent you from still owning the original)

* The right to dictate how the work is displayed (this is more important for works of art, of course, but if this right isn't waivered on h2g2, then we couldn't link, say, an entry on God to an entry on Satanism if the original author protested)

* The right to receive resale royalties (if this wasn't waivered, the project couldn't function from a business perspective, though as we've never sold any content, it's a moot point)

There are other bits and bobs in there, but these are the main rights that you waiver. They're not too scary, I would hope... how does this sound?

Wow! All these rights I got that I didn't know about... Thanks Mark, yep, this is all fine by me. Though I'd still like royalties... (go on! just a couple of percent! )

2% of £0 = £0

The cheque's in the post...

Thanks for that Mark.... Roughly waht I thought....

can I get a cheque too? I'd just frame it.....

Any idea if/when there'll be any H2G2 merchandise on sale again? (sorry this question has probably already been answered somewhere else...)

Sorry, no idea. It's on the plan of things to look at, but not surprisingly we can't just burn off merchandise and flog it - it all has to be done by the right people.

But it's something we'd very much like to do again.

Goodlyo!

This all sounds cool, but I would have thought it would all be covered under the legal rights. I still have a sneaking suspicion that "moral rights" are something that silly writers (or copyright holders) have tried to claim in court after they already signed away their legal rights. But this is just a guess. I'd have to become a lawyer to fully understand all this. No, wait, a SOLICITOR, right?

So you can Solicit - right?

The words "I would have thought" when used in a legal context are, often, the cause of problems.

As Robert Harris wrote, if you assume, it makes an ass out of u and me. I've learned that when it comes to the law, I'd never assume anything...

If so then all assumptions have to be thrown out the window - which rather makes a mockery of Science... as Science has to operate on some assumptions, as does the Law....

And to assume a stance - meaning to take a stance is that bad too...

(not serious here Mark - i know that assuming anything in Law is danngerous...)

More questions... (sorry)

1) "Warrant that such contribution is your own original work"

I'm concerned about cases where I have an entry which includes within it, or is solely, something in the public domain, or which is fair use, or which I have copyright on, or whatever. For example, http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A536988 (Principia Discordia) is in the public domain, so is not "original work".

On a smaller scale, http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A525791 (ASCII Art) contains many public domain pieces which are not original work, but the piece as a whole is original work.

3) "Agree to waive any moral rights in your contribution"

Big issue here for the ASCII Art entry - but in general, I don't believe I can waive moral rights of other people, can I? And there's nothing in the terms to suggest that I can only include other people's stuff to which the moral right has been waived. I only warrant that I "have the right to make it available to the BBC for all the purposes specified above".

Dang - and I thought I understood what I'd signed...

"includes within it, or is solely, something in the public domain, or which is fair use, or which I have copyright on, or whatever"

Do I get a prize for longest run-on sentence? You get the picture, I hope...

Good points. I'll ask the lawyers for a response, 'cos unlike you Lucinda, I don't get much of a thrill from nitpicking legalese.

BTW, was there a question 2?

Umm - no question two - it would appear that I can't count...

MyRedDice - "One, Three, Forty Two, ..."

Cool. Will get back to you with the response when I get it...

Mark,
Har-de-har. Yes, the old "ass/u/me" joke is older than coprolites. And there was that playwright of yours who suggested that we should "kill all the lawyers." (Just paraphrasing here, not advocating or agreeing. And I only know this reference from watching Star Trek.)

I've always wondered why we allow laws to become so complex that they must be interpreted for us common folk by lawyers. Maybe because the lawyers become politicians and make those same laws, designed more for ensuring job security of lawyers than for helping regular people understand them. (Insert witticism here about "The Making of Laws and Sausages.")

Maybe this is a slippery slope, but at some point, it's like none of us are qualified to understand laws unless we spent a few decades getting yelled at by John Houseman and wearing funny robes and/or wigs. Lawyers give legal opinions. The rest of us make assumptions about the law. How can we drive cars without "assuming" that we have enough of a feeble layman's grasp on the laws to not inspire a lawsuit every time we turn the key? But on h2g2, making any move at all now seems surrounded by minute questions of legality. Like why is the public allowed to post any text at all on h2g2 when any of it could be plagiarized or violating some copyright? We can't post off-site images for just this reason (among others), yet we continue to use text that could just as easily be illegal. I guess (again I make an ass out of myself, at least) it's because pictures are worth a thousand words, too dangerous not to regulate more heavily than text. But it seems like BBC legal would rather see no contributions from the public, since we present too great a risk of copyright violation or libel in our text or images.

Lucinda probes at this murky territory by attempting to understand the legalese and requesting further clarifications, even if it forces h2g2 staff to wearily ask the legal department more questions. Yet when it comes to a crunch, Lucinda will always be told that the lawyers understand some law that is beyond the rest of us, that our inexpertise in the matter makes our "assumptions" about the law less important than whatever judgement the lawyers hand down. That's why it doesn't seem very useful for me to keep asking questions to clarify.

[No offense, Lu. It's helpful and interesting to hear these clarifications, so we can avoid posting material that will get wiped in the first place. But when you post something you believe meets the rules and the lawyers demand it be removed, I don't think a researcher's knowledge of the minutiae of the House Rules will really matter.]