Copyright / compensation issues for zine contributors

[wayspurrchen]

Hey y'all, this is probably one of the more serious issues we'll have to contend with when it comes to the Robot Arms Pub. Since we're likely to solicit or accept outside contributors to the zine for content, and we might have intentions to sell the zine in print (or accept donations on web?), we need to figure out our policy on who owns the copyright for written and artistic works. I think the two are slightly different on account of industry standards and I'll outline how.

Writing

Writing's typical copyright standard tends to strongly favor the publication, giving exclusive first publication rights and requiring a credit. I've never really liked this and I think it screws writers from properly promoting themselves; I think we should allow writers to submit us already-published work, or if they want to publish through us first, and merely ask politely that if they're interested, pretty please, that they reference us when they republish the story to help grow the zine's audience.

Artwork

I don't actually know a lot about how artwork is financed. It seems to be a slightly backwards relationship from writing - artists aren't typically compensated for having their work appear in the publication because there is an expectation that they will use the exposure to sell original artworks. Artwork also tends to propagate much quicker than writing, making the concept of "first publishing rights" a little silly.

Copyright

Clearly, if we plan to sell the webzine at all, we can't use others' work without their explicit permission. We need to make sure that we are either sourcing / creating original works, or that we are getting permission (and proof of permission). But we need a blanket statement that we can give to individual contributors, claiming no liability, that they cannot sue us, they give us permission to use their work, etc. etc. I'm not sure how to start here. Does anyone know a list of public zines / journals that have statements like this?

Compensation

Even if we do sell the webzine, we won't have much to compensate people for. Perhaps we could have a transparent revenue model where we start paying people out in the following order:

• Monthly server / maintenance costs first
• 10% of profit to RAC/RAP funds (if we do this, who manages the money? how much money is it? we can probably delay this question until/if we ever make enough revenue to care about this)
• 90% of profit to individual contributors

Or whatever other monetary compensation sliding scale we want to use. But how do we pay out contributors? It could make sense to pay out writing contributors IF they give us first publish rights for a certain amount of time (a fairly short amount of time); we're trading $ for OUR exposure. It makes less sense to pay out artists if we're just promoting them, but maybe this attitude is backwards. I'd be interested in hearing y'all's thoughts on the economics of this. Of course, keep in mind that in most cases we won't ever make a profit to pay ourselves or the contributors, but this is worth figuring out now.

[sonyamann]

As I said in Slack, I think copyright should stay with the creators, and we'll just have the right to publish, hopefully with some time period of exclusivity. Exclusivity is probably negotiable.

Regarding licensing / publishing permissions, we can take care of that informally via email (especially since electronic communication can be legally binding). The only catch is that we'll need to know people's real names for it to have legal teeth. Not sure whether that will be an obstacle.

Payment: I like the idea of disbursing whatever we bring in after covering costs. I also like what @wayspurrchen said in Slack:

okay cool. so from the opinions sourced so far and my own thoughts, it seems like this: we will offer a potential-to-get-paid for writers who want to grant us exclusivity for some period of time (a month?), and we will offer guaranteed easy-access links and promotions for artists as well as writers

[wayspurrchen]

Cool. Recapping some convos we've had in the RAC Slack (hey that rhymes!), we are tentatively going to go with the following:

• We will offer payment to writing contributors on the conditions that we make a profit over a set cost of our server fees (to be determined and then disclosed), if they grant us exclusivity (but NOT copyright ownership) of their work for a certain period of time (a month sounds fine).
• We will not offer payments to visual artists for contributing their artwork, as the art industry doesn't work like that and artists don't expect to be paid for getting their work shared.
• We can reserve the right to offer a "scholarship" or "grant" (gotta figure out the right term) to a contributor (writing, visual, or otherwise) at individual RAC members' discretion.
• We can only offer to pay writers who are not anonymous/pseudonymous in their communications with us because otherwise we cannot form a legally binding contract with them via email / text communication. We can, however, publish their work under a pen name if they desire.
• Every contributor will be given detailed credit and links back to their online presences (or whatever communication format they prefer).
• We will encourage contributors to please link to and promote us, but there is no strict requirement to do so.
• We will publish our revenue income from each webzine publicly so that people can understand where money is going and hold ourselves accountable.

Any additions / objections?

[sonyamann]

We will not offer payments to visual artists for contributing their artwork, as the art industry doesn't work like that and artists don't expect to be paid for getting their work shared.

I'm not sure that's an accurate description of the standard expectations (at least not in the illustration world). If we're going to offer payment to writers, I would prefer to offer payment to visual artists as well. However, there is an abundance of cool Creative Commons art out there, so we will definitely have access to at least some free visuals.

Also, I love the idea of publishing our financials!

[tek-witch]

Commercial illustrators are tradespeople, not artists. Likewise commercial photographers. It's possible to be both, but not at the same time, practically speaking.This is not an insult, it's just a distinction with a difference.

"I need an image of X" "I will sell/lease you an image of X for $" "I accept"

That's not art, it's commerce. Highly skilled labor. Those people need to be paid for their work, (which I totally support if it's required) or we need to use works from CC workers who have agreed that they don't need to be paid.