If someone sends a letter, who owns the contents? The sender or the recipient?
This is, for very long reasons, a very important question to me right now.
And, does it matter if the contents might otherwise not be available to the recipient? (Though they were sent with full knowledge by the sender to the recipient.)
In this case I’m essentially the recipient, and the sender is trying to screw me badly. Less said about that the better.
You own the physical letter. The paper and ink. You can (usually) burn it, sell it, display it on your mantel, etc.
The author of the letter owns the copyright on the letter. They and only they can grant rights to republish the letter and such.
You may, under “fair use” quote small parts of the letter in other works. But deciding what is “fair use” and what is violating copyright is murky to say the least. In many cases, it comes down to who has the most money to hire lawyers.
To make things a little more clear, a computer program was included as an appendix to a more formal document. I need to be able to use the program.
If it’s that important to you, you should consult a lawyer in your jurisdiction.
Then you are going to have to pay the programmer to use it.
The program belongs to him, unless:
The fact that he showed you a copy of his program gives you absolutely no rights at all to use it. If you really need that, you’ll have to pay for it.
I wrote part of, and updated, the program. (And I’m a ‘her’ programmer) This was part of both my unclassified government work and academic responsibilities. These responsibilities have begun to clash. Since I worked on it, and my work allowed me to send it to me as a student, I want to make sure I have a good title to it.
I’m not trying to gyp a programmer - him or her. Besides this is academia - normally we share everything. Right now some egos have gotten involved, and I just want to get my academic work done.
Is it the U.S. Government? If so works produced by contractors under government contracts are protected under U.S. Copyright Law. The ownership of the copyright depends on the terms of the contract and the type of work undertaken. Contract terms and conditions vary between agencies… classified vs. unclassified may have nothing to do with it.
Civilian agencies are guided by the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR). There are a number of FAR provisions that can affect the ownership of the copyright. FAR Subpart 27.4–Rights in Data and Copyright provides copyright guidance for the civilian agencies. Additionally, some agencies may have their own FAR Supplements that they follow.
Wiki says (& I can attest this is substantially correct)
Under the FAR general data rights clause (FAR 52.227-14), the government has unlimited rights in all data first produced in performance of or delivered under a contract, unless the contractor asserts a claim to copyright or the contract provides otherwise. Unless provided otherwise by an Agency FAR Supplement, a contractor may assert claim to copyright in scientific and technical articles based on or containing data first produced in the performance of a contract and published in academic, technical or professional journals, symposia proceedings, or the like.
The express written permission of the Contracting Officer is required before the contractor may assert or enforce the copyright in all other works first produced in the performance of a contract. However, if a contract includes Alternate IV of the clause, the Contracting Officer’s approval is not required to assert claim to copyright. Whenever the contractor asserts claim to copyright in works other than computer software, the Government, and others acting on its behalf, are granted a license to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute, perform and display the copyrighted work. For computer software the scope of the Government’s license does not include the right to distribute to the public, and for “commercial software”, the Government typically obtains no better license than would any other customer.
In otherwords if this was programming developed with federal money – no matter who did the actual development -your sending it to yourself or developing it could be mute as far as “clear title” is concerned…Or what Quartz said
The copyright status of work performed for the Federal government is going to be governed by the contract under which the work was performed. Work performed “as part of academic responsibilities” is almost certainly owned by the university–consult the terms of your employment agreement. If you modified an existing program, then the copyright to the modified work belongs to whomever owned the original program.
I am not a lawyer, you are not my client, and this is not legal advice–but what you have there is, legally speaking, a big ol’ mess.
Big mess is right!
This work wasn’t performed under a contract, exactly. It was a fellowship, designed to further the fellow’s career. My academic work was specifically included in the work I was designated to perform. Including, specifically, working on the program. And then sending it to myself for academic reference.
And, while this is federal data, the dataset resulting from it falls under the rule that any health-related database created by the federal government must be made public. They just get kind of squishy about when it gets made public, sometimes. Hence a large part of my problem.
Life gets too complicated sometimes.
Anyone want to hear about my other big ol’ ugly legal troubles? Anyone? …