I had my resume written professionally. It is quite good. However, when you open my resume in Adobe Acrobat, the following notice is displayed (note that the actual URL uniquely identifies my resume):
Suppose I strip this DRM from the document. Will I have violated the DMCA? Does this resume writer really own the copyright to my resume? If not, are they breaking the law?
You hired this person to write the resumé? Then you hold the copyright. It was a ‘work for hire’, just like the manuals I write at work. Contact the service to have the DRM removed, as you did not request it.
Of course, if you signed a contract, you may have agreed to the DRM in its terms.
Why would you put a resume in Acrobat?
When I was in HR, we threw away any resumes that were not in plain text or MS Word.
Now, when many HR departments use an automated reader to scan resumes for basic criteria, I would think a simple, text-readable version would be even more important.
If I was given a resume with a script or program demanding access to the internet I guarendamntee not only would it get deleted, I would never consider bringing you in for an interview, especially in an environment demanding computer saavy like my company. You may want to point out to the resume writer that unauthorized software trying to punch out to the internet can get IT people really grumpy and could be totally destroying any value his work might have had with technically inclined HR people.
In academia professional typesetting is the norm and LaTeX is the standard. YMMV.
That’s very relevant experience, thanks. I was going to strip this file clean either way, but feel somewhat more comfortable about it after reading up on work-for-hire copyright law.
I send any document that should not be edited by the recipient as a PDF. I certainly won’t assume that they use MS Word. I have also received CVs from recruitment agents that have obviously been re-edited (including one from a 20-something whose work history stretched back to the 70’s). So I don’t trust anyone with my data.
There are plenty of tools to search and extract data from a PDF, so modern HR systems are set up to handle them.
As for the CV writer, they are trying protecting their work by not letting it be re-edited (so AlterEgo has to revisit the writer to get it updated, and pay more money). The next version of OpenOffice may include PDF import and editing, making this approach redundant. Other tools also provide PDF editing capability. But including a link to a remote site is beyond the pale, and AlterEgo should rightly demand that it should be removed from the PDF he uses for submission. The writer is expecting that AlterEgo just prints off the CV for a paper submission, so the notice is for him and him alone. Of course, it may depend on what AlterEgo payed for.
Si
That is completely wrong (especially since you’re in Canada). I’m not a lawyer so I cannot cite you verse, but I do know, and have been told my lawyers, that the gist of what you just said is wrong.
First, take the example of wedding photos. If you hire a professional photographer to do your wedding, read the contract, he / she will own the copyright. (This is the best everyday example I can think of to refute your ‘work for hire’ statement. Though, like you mention, contracts can shift the intellectual ownership of any work from one party to another - Always read your contract.)
Second, you completely ignore a Canadian legal curve, that of the “moral right” of the artist. This cite is the best I can offer. It demonstrates most bluntly, though, that even if you “hire” somebody to create a work, you do not automatically acquire the copyright. (This is a Canadian oddity, which I cannot say is valid - or if it even exists - in the United States law.)
IANAL, but I know a little about copyright. I believe that “works for hire” are those created by employees in an employer-employee relationship. However, even in those cases, a careful employer will get employees to sign an agreement assigning copyright: I had to sign one when starting in my present job, since part of my job is collaborating producing copyrighted works.
A resume company and a wedding photographer are generally not employees, and so the doctrine doesn’t apply to them – absent an agreement to the contrary, they own the copyright in the works produced… However, again, often there will be a written contract which deals with the copyright in the works, including an assignation of some rights to reproduce them to the hirer.
Sunspace, it’s not a good idea to give legal advice, especially if there’s a good chance it’s wrong.
Alterego, don’t accept legal advice on this board.
As **Giles **said, the work-made-for-hire doctrine applies to employers and employees. Freelancers and authors in other kinds of one-off, temporary, casual, or sporadic relationships keep copyrights in what they’ve created.
This is exceptionally bad legal advice because it’s almost certainly, um, wrong.
There is vast difference between work done by employees (the manuals you write at work) and work created by an independent contractor. Work of independent contractors is work for hire only if its the right kind and you agreed that the work was a work for hire:
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ9.html
The issue of whether the author is an employee or an independent contractor can get murky, but if you just hired someone to write a resume, it’s very unlikely he’s your employee.
My apologies. I just find it very odd that if you hire someone to write a resume for you, the result isn’t yours…
There may be other reasons that it’s ok to do as the OP asks, and even if there aren’t I’d expect the author to consent if the author wants any referral business. I’m just pointing out that work for hire isn’t nearly as broad as people think it is.
The general default is that whoever creates a work is the owner of any copyrightable content. Of course the “facts” used to construct a resume does not constitute creative content and can be copied by anyone. However, arrangement, specific wording, design … these kinds of aspects might very well be creative and original, and, thus, copyrightable. The presumption is that the person who actually made these decisions and created the work is the owner of the copyright.
The work-made-for-hire doctrine is an exception to this presumption, and, as Gfactor notes, generally speaking it either requires a solid employment relationship or a written contract.
It might be the case that when Alterego engaged this resume writer that he signed some kind of contract. I suspect, if so, that it probably states that the resume writer owns the rights but that Alterego is permitted to do certain things with it. As Gfactor says, it’s likely that the resume writer isn’t going to want to put too many restrictions in place, or he won’t get repeat or referral business.
Alterego, what does the resume writer say? Did you ask him about it?
Just to add (based on a re-reading of the OP):
Alterego opened the document in Adobe Acrobat - a PDF editing tool. I suspect that the link that popped up only does so in Acrobat, and not in Acrobat Reader - the non-editing tool most people use to view PDF files.
So the author has a reminder in the document that they wrote of the restrictions on the editing of said document. This is a message both to the person that the resume is about, and to anyone who receives the resume, that changing it is a violation of the rule that it was created and sold under. The tagged external link presumably triggers some sort of notification to the author.
This is obviously some functionality within Adobe Acrobat, to manage document control/rights management. Alterego may not like it, but it is probably within the scope of the contract between himself and the resume author.
Of course, if this pops up in Acrobat Reader, then it is intrusive and unnecessary and should be removed.
Si
Why? And did you at least tell the unfortunates who gave you a non-doc non-txt document why you weren’t considering their application?
-FrL-
The problem is that the person in Human Resources, or elsewhere in the hiring organisation, who opens the document may need to use Adobe Acrobat in their work to create PDF documents. If they do, then the default for opening PDF files may be Adobe Acrobat, and they will get the message. It’s not very well thought out by the firm writing the resumes, since many, if not most, people these days will send resumes as attachments to email, not as printed documents.
I think that by the point you’re past paper resumes and into electronic resumes, the job ads, recruiters, etc., always indicate in which format to send a resume. At least in my experience, it was always stated. If there are no requirements stated, though, then PDF seems like a logical choice.
Moral rights exist in the copyright law of almost all the world, since it is part of the Berne Convention.
However, the U.S. specifically rejected moral right when it wrote a new copyright law adapting almost all the other provisions of Berne. There are some highly technical exceptions, but for everybody’s everyday experience there is no moral right in the U.S.
That copyright law also gives you an automatic copyright to your words the moment you write them, unless you are an employee who has assigned the right to the employer.
I would assume that any contract, written or oral, to write a resume would have that rights assignment, but I don’t know your circumstances and I’m not a lawyer.
What you said.
When I do client development consultation I always provide our staffs’ resumes in .pdf format, especially because a lot of offices related to our work use WordPerfect exclusively.