We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
THE SCREEN
WRITER
do not sign that release form, you may nevertheless, in the absence of an indelible understanding to the contrary, lose the right to your own property by going to work on it while being paid for your time. Your original conception has been poured into final form, like one fluid irito another, and it is impossible to separate them. You will be met with legalisms, such as, implied donation, and continued employment as a quid pro quo.
Let’s be clear about this. Your agreement with your employer entitles him to your services in creating ideas. (Whether this should be so is a question in another field; I am discussing the legal consequences of forms of employment contracts ordinarily in use.) If you do not per¬ form the work of a writer, which at least includes if it does not mean creating, then you are not performing your contract. But living up to such a contract does not include the gift of your property. Rendering services as a writer does not include conveying literary property which was in existence before your employment commenced. To transfer a story or an idea you own is a sale or an assignment of rights in a chattel. To be employed is to render services for the benefit of another, and the fact that those services may produce a story does not alter the nature of the arrangement. The distinction between the two is perfectly plain. The difference between matter and energy, which is still good physics except on a sub-atomic level, is likewise good law.
One of the easy tests is when the property came into existence, during the employment or before? It is a metaphysical problem of allur¬ ing complexity to determine the moment when a creative idea detaches itself from the matrix of matter and memory. The product of most adult minds is probably fabricated almost entirely from earlier fruits, and these in turn from earlier still, and so on. Fortunately, the practical problem is not so difficult. When the conception is given identifiable form, so that the boundaries which separate it from the wordless and shapeless flow of mentation are distinguishable, that is the point at which for most purposes the work is deemed to have come into existence. Putting it on paper or on wax is a good way to do it. This helps not only to recognize the critical moment but also to prove it to others.
Then, if your employer asks you to work on your material, you can make a decision. If you have lost interest in it as a property and are
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