Suppose we have one Mr X. who writes some stuff. Mr X. has a colleague, Mr Y.
Mr Y. wishes to adapt some of Mr. X’s works. He get’s Mr X’s permission to do so. Assume any legal written agreement that may be necessary.
The adaptation takes Mr X’s works, summarises bits, expands bits, adds new material, updates information, and so on.
Now, legally speaking, can Mr Y. claim to be the author of the work? Is there any legal requirement to identify the author as << Written by Mr Y based upon original material written by Mr X>> or can he simply say << written by Mr Y >> Remember that Mr X has given permission to use his material.
This question is inspired by another thread in which it is argued that Mr X and Mr Y are in fact the same person. Evidence for this proposition including Mr Y’s adaptation of Mr X’s work without acknowledgment.
Please only answer the legal question here. Any discussion of whether they are or are not the same person can be made in the other thread.
Legally speaking of course he can say that he’s the author of the expanded and revised work. Whether or not he can copyright that work is, to my understanding, a different question. Depending on the extent of the reworking of the material, Mr Y’s work may be considered a “derivative work” of Mr X’s, which IIRC is not copyrightable.
Claiming to be the author and owning copyright can be two different things.
Mr Y can claim to be the author of the work. The ‘work’ here consists of the book he produced, even if parts of it are derived from someone else’s work.
Mr Y automatically owns the copyright on whatever is his own, original, created work. He does not own and cannot claim copyright on anything else. So he can claim copyright on the particular arrangement of bits and pieces that he created, to whatever extent this constitutes his own, original created work, but not on any of the constituent elements that someone else created. If there is room for doubt and interpretation as to what constitutes his own original created work (especially the extent to which it may so be deemed), and if anyone wishes to contest this, then that’s what the courts are for.
Yes, I understand that he can say he’s the author, but can he imply that he’s the *sole *author.
The point is, when the book is published, is there any legal requirement to state the authorship of the original material. (given that the original author has granted his permision)
In the original thread, people were citing a book credited to “Ed Zotti” rather than credited to “Ed Zotti adapted from the works of Cecil Adams.” One claimed that such a credit would be unthinkable if Cecil actually existed.
Since the person who made the assertion wasn’t making a legal argument, but, rather, and arguement about common practice and plagarism, what difference does it make? :dubious:
DSYoung draws the significant distinction between copyright and plagarism.
If Mr. X agrees to let Mr. Y take his work, revise it, and call it his own work, I can’t see any reason why that’d be illegal. Copyright can be transferred. I was a ghostwriter for a book which has someone else listed as the author on the cover & title page, and the coyright is also in this person’s name. It was a work for hire contract, and these terms were part of the agreement. This kind of stuff goes on all the time.
I think people generally know (or don’t care) about ghostwriting. But taking bits and pieces of stuff that other people wrote and passing it off as your own is dishonest, even if it’s legal. I don’t know about the specific book in question, but if Mr Y. took passages from Mr. X and used them as if they were his own (a la Mike Barnicle or Ron Borges), then yeah, it’s plagarism.
You can assemble other people’s work and publish it, but then you are an editor, not a author. Encyclopedias, almanacs, and other reference books do this all the time without necessarily crediting the dozens or hundreds of authors who contributed. But a single person isn’t claiming to have written the whole thing.
You need to go to the instructions to parse exactly what material belongs in the boxes. However, it’s clear from this form (to me, at any rate) that disclosure would have to be made of any material originally written by someone other than the author. These forms are public documents, but I don’t know how to search for them.
Note that the original point was that this wasn’t an adaptation, but rather taking large sections from Cecil’s book word for word without attribution. That sort of thing is plagiarism unless you credit the original author (it’s not really a copyright issue). The only way it would be plagiarized would be if the writer took the work from himself.
Plagiarism isn’t a crime or civil wrong in and of itself. It might give rise to civil liability if it were in the context of using this work to obtain academic credit, for example. And it might give rise to a civil cause of action in the hands of the original author if the material was used without permission.
But if the original author gave permission, then I am aware of no crime or civil infringement inherent in the second author failing to acknowledge the contribution of the original author.
Just a small note for completeness, and for anyone coming to this subject for the first time. Yes, there are forms you can fill in and there are sometimes reasons to do so, but you automatically own the copyright on your own, original creative work - even if you don’t fill in a form, even if you don’t put a (c) symbol on it, even if you don’t do anything. Of course, there are sometimes good reasons for including the (c) symbol, and it can sometimes be of help in case of legal dispute, and filling in forms etc., does sometimes serve a purpose. But ownership of copyright is in law deemed to be arise automatically.
That is certainly true. Registration is not a necessity. In real terms, though, virtually every book produced is in fact registered, as were all the Straight Dope books and the Ed Zotti book that generated this question. That’s why noting the information on he registration form is germane.