Search Engines and Online LibrariesContent Creators
There are several people who might fall into the class of people who create intellectual property. First, there are creatives, for example writers, visual artists, or even project managers such as directors or the team who write code for software. All of these are actively involved in the creative process. When they are doing as employees or contractors of a company, then typically the rights flow to the company, as the financier of the project. But someone creating on their own should have full right to distribute as they please, whether or not this involves active digital rights management. There are examples of star acts that have sought to exert greater control over their work, using digital distribution models to bypass record companies. This is an example of a content creator exerting their natural control over how they distribute and control their work (Clemons, Gu, & Lang, 2002-2003). Open source software provides a similar example, except where the content creator specifically denies their intellectual property rights.
Producers
The control over production processes often leaves content creators with a fee or set percentage of commission based on sales, with the rights holder actually being the company that financed the venture. These producers – music labels and academic journal publishers being two examples – claim themselves as category a. They are, however, not. Their claim is based on legal precedent, which in turn is based on a capitalist logic that the entity that puts up the capital is taking the most risk, and therefore should...
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