About credits...

[Fabio Gadducci]

Mattias wrote:

>
>    About why they stopped printing credits in (at least) the Swedish Donald
>Duck after about five issues back in 1990, or whenever, I believe that Disney
>put the pressure on Egmont without any reason at all. Oh, they may well have
>BELIEVED they had a reason, but unless I'm misinformed about how our
>legislation works when it comes to who owns f'rinstance a literary work, or a
>comic, or sumpin' similar, it's really like this: an artist ALWAYS owns his
>work until he sells it off, and UNLESS otherwise specified only sells the right
>to a limited (usually one-time) publication of it; he can, however, always
>negotiate away his rights, and sell outright the ownership of his work, or sell
>it for unlimited use, etc. BUT this must always be specified in his contract,
>or it is (usually) automatically assumed that what he has sold is the right to
>use the stuff ONCE. AND also: no buyer (f'rinstance a publisher) can EVER
>negotiate away the artists RIGHT to be identified as creator of his own work.
>IF a contract has such a clause, that clause is simply illegal. BUT, alas, if
>an artist were to press charges on an issue like this, he might win the case,
>alright, but would he work for those people again...?
>
>Anyhow, to sum it up: an artist can sell his MATERIAL rights to a piece work as
>much as he wants to/is pressured to, but he cannot sell, nor can anyone buy,
>his IMMATERIAL right as creator of the work. (I hope these are the correct
>legal terms in English). In so many words: Hemmets Journal/Disney is obliged to
>in Sweden to give credits if an artist so demands, but they are equally free to
>buy copyrights and publishing rights etc. fom the artist to their hearts
>contents...
>

They same happens here in Italy, but usually Disney states explicitly in
his contracts that authors give all the material (i.e., illimitated
publication) rights to Disney. Besides, the author usually do not have
their artwork back. Sometimes, as for the (in)famous story of the marriage
of Mickey all of you know of (by Chendi-Cavazzano), all the artwork had
been destroyed by the Disney staff, and the story has been definitively
banned from reprint, under pressures of Disney USA.
Luckily, the politics followed by Disney Italy on immaterial rights is
quite different: they always print credits, at least for the Italian
artists (usually, the only ones for whom they can be sure wrt the paternity
of the artwork), while there is a mass-market monthly (Zio Paperone)
devoted to Carl Barks, containing stories mixed with (usually poor)
articles on him and his work.
I think they are starting to be aware of the commercial value artists can
have in these time...

Could someone tell what happens instead in the rest of Europe?

Fabio

================================================================
Fabio Gadducci            Dip. di Informatica
Home: +39-50-541725       Universita` di Pisa
Off.: +39-50-510268       Corso Italia 40, 56100 PISA (ITALY)
FAX:  +39-50-510226       E-mail:gadducci at di.unipi.it
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