{"id":2327,"date":"2016-12-05T01:44:35","date_gmt":"2016-12-05T06:44:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/?p=2327"},"modified":"2016-11-29T09:00:06","modified_gmt":"2016-11-29T14:00:06","slug":"copyright-0-1-we-dont-own-the-words-but-others-act-like-we-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/2016\/12\/copyright-0-1-we-dont-own-the-words-but-others-act-like-we-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Copyright 0.1\u2014We Don&#8217;t Own the Words, but Others Act Like We Do"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n<p><strong>Words written in the employ of a company belong to the company. Still, others will ask for them. Beware as you could be an accomplice to theft.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I am writing a few posts about copyright. I am compelled to do so by recent interviews with employers who seem ignorant of copyright basics. There is much good information on copyright and intellectual property rights online. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Copyright\">The Wikipedia article is one good place to begin learning<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes writers don&#8217;t own their words. I have written many pieces while employed by a company. I wrote those on the job in the pay of the company. The company O W N S those pieces and those words. If I take a copy of those words home and give them to others, I am a T H I E F.<\/p>\n<p>Excuse the over emphasis, but the content of the above paragraph seems to be unknown to many writers, other creators, and potential employers.<\/p>\n<p>I have interviewed for jobs as a proposal writer. One frequent request is, &#8220;Can you provide us with copies of proposals you wrote in the past?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This is a <strong>horrible<\/strong> request. Proposals written for companies are owned by those companies. Per above, if I take home the proposal (all or part), I am a thief, and the interviewer is requesting stolen property.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Oh, but you can extract the parts of the proposal that you wrote and remove any proprietary information, and &#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>No. I cannot. The above requests that I steal property, edit it, and hand it over.<\/p>\n<p>Sorry. I hate to break the news to some persons, but that is the law regardless of what &#8220;everybody does all the time.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips Words written in the employ of a company belong to the company. Still, others will ask for them. Beware as you could be an accomplice to theft. I am writing a few posts about copyright. I am compelled to do so by recent interviews with employers who seem ignorant of copyright basics. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263,67,5],"tags":[264,187,128],"class_list":["post-2327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-copyright","category-work","category-writing","tag-copyright","tag-work","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2328,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2327\/revisions\/2328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}