| Chrkeller said: General comment. I'm guessing most here haven't created much via their own investment, blood, sweat and tears. |
OK, because I don’t think we’d have a disagreement. Under the model I feel would be ideal, if you create a chair, you can do with it whatever you want. Make a YouTube video and say “I created the best fucking chair in the world, and now I’m burning it, motherfuckers!” And have fun. That’s your right. Same with a manuscript you’ve written, or a painting you’ve painted.
What I’m talking about is relationship between creators, publishers, and audience. Or manufacturers if we’re talking about chairs. Particularly, the limitations on the rights of the publisher/manufacturer to destroy another person’s work. The manufacturer’s job is the manufacturing and reproduction of the chair. They’d have the responsibility to preserve the blueprints you sold them for manufacturing purposes, and a master copy of the chair (which doubles as the asset file repository for a game). They wouldn’t have the right to destroy your creation without your consent - that goes beyond the scope of the manufacturer’s contract. But they would have the right to sell the manufacturing rights to another party, and that party would be acquiring all the responsibility.
Since you, as the creator sold the rights of reproduction, you’d no longer have the rights yourself for reproduction - so you can’t authorize others to reproduce it without the consent of the manufacturer. If the manufacturer wishes to destroy copies of the chair and its blueprints, they must first seek your approval to destroy your creation. You didn’t sell them the rights to eliminate your work, you sold them the rights to reproduce and distribute. If they ask about the destruction, you could say “Sure, but this chair means a lot to be, 25 million dollars or get the fuck off my property.” But, otherwise, if the manufacturer abandons the reproduction of the chair (perhaps by their choice, or when a certain timeframe of inaction expires) and hasn’t received the consent of the creator to destroy it, then they must turn it over to the public.
In short:
Creator = rights to destroy the chair and its blueprints.
Manufacturer = rights to reproduce the chair, but must maintain a master copy and copies of the blueprints.
Abandonment = rights of reproduction and blueprints transfer to the public domain.
Public = May reproduce the chair if it is public domain. May not reproduce the chair if not public domain, and not authorized.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
