Work-for-Hire Quotes

Certainly, my many years working in the comics industry, creating products that I do not own, has made me rather fierce on the subject of giving up rights.

I think this last film I finished, 'The Butler,' is the closest I will come to as a work-for-hire.

If we're talking about someone creating something new, those rights are fairly well defined (in the United States, at least) under existing copyright law. But then there's often discussion about the rights of people who produce works under work-for-hire arrangements, which can be far more subtle and nuanced.

Watching people like Brandon Graham, Erik Larsen, and Joe Keatinge produce stories for my characters was a revelation... Like, 'Why are you doing work for hire when others are working on characters you own?' 'Bloodstrike' and 'Brigade' is me re-focusing my focus!

Mostly with commercial work, it isn't about personal vision. It's not a personal effort, it's work for hire. That's more my attitude with those. You just want to be a professional worker.

'Sabotage' was a work for hire. It wasn't my original idea or script or anything.

The current term of protection for software is the life of an author plus 70 years, or, if it's work-for-hire, a total of 95 years. This is a bastardization of the Constitution's requirement that copyright be for "limited times."

The money can be decent, but I really don't recommend the work-for-hire route as an entry into publishing. Too many things can go wrong.