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Notes from Notchcode

5.12.2008

Repost from the desert: Work-for-Hire, Licensing, and Usage

This week I am out in the Four Corners area, doing double-duty as a photographer for one client and also helping to plan the 2008 NAAMLP National Conference. It's a fun trip, with great clients, and I couldn't be happier.

Since I'm out in the slot canyons and reclaimed uranium mines of Utah and Arizona this week and unable to spend a lot of seat-time in front of the lappy, I am reposting some of my articles from years' past that I think are still relevant, interesting, and worth a read. Here's the first installment, originally posted in October 2002.

Work for hire? Licensing? Useage? What the heck does all this mean?

If you have questions like this, check out this site. It's from the Art Director's Club of Metropolitan Washington, and has a nice summation of what work-for-hire is.


I have yet to meet a designer that prefers to do work-for-hire over transferring right of useage to a client, and there are many good reasons for this, most notably because designers lose control over their image and reputation if the work is changed in the future.

To quote from the Graphic Artists' Guilds' "Pricing and Ethical Guidelines", 9th edition:

"By signing a work-for-hire contract, a freelance artist becomes an employee [of the contracting company] only for the purposes of the copyright law, but for no other purpose. In addition to losing authorship status and copyright, the artist receives no salary, unemployment, workers' compensation, or disability insurance; nor does he or she receive health insurance, sick pay, vacation, pension, or profit-sharing opportunities that a companymay provide its formal, salaried employees."


(I mean, come on, if you're going to treat the designer's output the same way you treat the output of your employees, at least give them the benefits....)

"When a freelance artist signs a work-for-hire contract, the artist has no further relationship to the work, cannot display it, copy it, or use it for other purposes such as displaying the work in the artist's portfolio. The client, now considered the legal author may change the art and use it again without limitation."


I will add here that in stripping the designer of any claim on authorship, it devalues the designer's role in the entire creative process, and further devalues the designer's role by allowing the design to slip from the control of the artist and into the hands of anyone the contractor wishes for future revisions, distortions, or changes.

So why is that a bad thing? It sounds like a boon if you're a client, certainly: you get the right to use the designer's hard work in whatever way you choose, however you choose. Many designers (myself included) usually grant that right in any case, to better serve the client's projected future needs. But take this extremely hypothetical, made-up example:

Say you, the designer, create something in print for a client. The client loves it. You love it. It wins awards. Everyone's happy. Then your client decides to create a website based on the printed material. Wonderful, you say! More exposure for the designer's work, and the client gets to re-use much of the design, maintaining consistency from medium to medium, strengthining their brand.

You, the designer, signed a work-for-hire agreement when you created the printed piece. Didn't seem like a problem at the time. But now the client has asked you to re-do some design elements found in the printed piece for use in the website. You balk at this; those elements they want you to re-do were the cornerstone of what made the piece work, both from an aesthetic and from a functional perspective! After much negotiation, the client takes the job elsewhere, to a designer hungry for work, who (after signing a work-for-hire agreement, of course) proceeds to gut your design according to the client's wishes, and create the website.

The site, while complete, is now similar to the printed piece only on a very superficial level. Even the new designer admits to you later that she's not really happy with the result, either, but "that's the way the client wanted it, and they already owned all the work, so it was either do it this way or leave the job to someone else."

Worse yet, the client has attributed the work, both yours and the new designer's, to themselves. The website, despite its problems, wins many awards. Neither you nor the new designer get any recognition. No new clients flock to your door. And you can't even take credit for your own work.

That's harsh! Would you want ME taking credit for all the hard work YOU put into something?

There is a long-standing concept of something called "moral rights", which assert that the creator of something has the right to claim parentage, to be accountable for it and to take credit for it, and that no one else may do so. Work-for-hire practices take away that fundamental right, and it degrades everyone involved: the designer, the client, and the thing itself.

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