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Intellectual Property Concerns?
You have my hearty congratulations. I would like to bring up a question that this announcement brought to my mind. You should know that I'm not bringing this as any sort of attack, but I am sure it will come to others' minds as well.
I don't see anything on the submission page regarding the submitted hint becoming your property or the property of the website. So how are you handling the possible intellectual property concerns? I in no way discount the incredibly massive energy you take to act as editor of this site, which, in my eyes, is categorically the BEST and most useful Mac OS X website on the Web. But wouldn't the hints be considered the intellectual property of those who tendered them, since the submission process doesn't contain any explicit tendering of those rights? Thus, wouldn't they be entitled to royalties from your book? Are they given credit? None of these matters to me, actually; if I were to find that a hint of mine made it into it, I'd be rather excited (although perhaps a bit peeved if I was not given credit for the hint somewhere in the book, even on an acknowledgements page). But I am sure the question will be raised by others, so perhaps getting an answer to these thoughts posted early (and when it is being posed by a friend and not a troll) is probably in your best interests. You might want to talk with O'Reilly's lawyers, too, if you haven't already. The post is meant primarily for Rob, but any legal or educated, non-troll, non-flame opinions are certainly welcome, too! Remember, I am not attacking Rob; as I say above, I love this site. I'm just wondering how he's going to handle what I perceive as a potentially problematic issue ... I'm a legal assistant, so I know that people nowadays are really very sue-happy ... I'm just trying to prep Rob for a possible OUCH situation. But copyright law's very far out of my forte, though ... (I will be buyin' this book, most likely!)
Re: Intellectual Property Concerns?
First:
Extra detailed response...
It's a valid question, and one I gave a lot of thought to before the project started. Here are some things to consider about this project...
Finally, someone asked the question regarding "If you use my hint, do I get a free book?" The answer is "it depends." If your hint contained an original script that I wanted to use, then yes, you will receive a copy of the book when it hits the streets (and you would have already known this, as we would have had an email exchange about it). But if you were the one who submitted the "shift command control 4" hint, then, no, I'm afraid you won't be receiving a book. As much as I'd love to give a book to everyone whose general concept wound up in the book, the economics of the situation clearly make that impossible. I get a relatively limited number of "author's copies" for free, and anything beyond that I have to buy at a fairly healthy cost (not full retail, but not cheap, either). With 500 hints in the book, purchase and distribution of free books to anyone whose general concept hint wound up being covered would break the bank for me -- I'd end up losing my shirt on the book project! And while I didn't decide to write the book to get rich, I hope not go broke because I chose to write it. I hope this long-winded reply addresses most of the concerns, and I understand the need to question the project. But the single most important thing to remember is that less than one percent of the site content is copied and pasted into the book (and explicit permission was granted for those items); everything else was written from scratch using only the topic as the guide for the book version of the hint. The book is an original creation guided by the concepts covered on the site. -rob.
Extra detailed response...
Congratulations! Propably this and "OS X Unleashed" are the two books I will recommend to every Linux-switcher who buys a Mac!
Future...
I'll probably change the site footer to match the forum site, which reads: "Site design © 2002 macosxhints.com; individuals retain copyright of their postings
Extra detailed response...
Congrats Rob. I for one am working on a small booklet for the sys admins who use mac as the server or in a network environment. |
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