Slashdot Mirror

Union and center of commerce contracts are not converted into law, why would they?

Maybe not in the jurisdiction where you live, but my point from the beginning has been that you're extrapolating from that jurisdiction when you shouldn't. For example, the current "collective agreement" for consulting and market research companies (official website of the Spanish state), which applies to all companies in the sector in Spain unless there's a regional one to override it or the employee and employer have negotiated a contract which is more favourable to the employee than this one. An explanation of the system is given here (in Spanish), and the relevant primary legislation is here.

But the employer reserves the right to convert it into a project for hire...

That still doesn't make any sense to me: the economic rights in a work are transferable but the moral rights are not, and the whole point of "work for hire" is to ensure that the moral rights belong to someone other than the natural person who created the work. However, reading the EU Directive on the legal protection of software, it does seem more ambiguous than I expected:

Article 2 Authorship of computer programs

1. The author of a computer program shall be the natural person or group of natural persons who has created the program or, where the legislation of the Member State permits, the legal person designated as the rightholder by that legislation. Where collective works are recognized by the legislation of a Member State, the person considered by the legislation of the Member State to have created the work shall be deemed to be its author.

2. In respect of a computer program created by a group of natural persons jointly, the exclusive rights shall be owned jointly.

3. Where a computer program is created by an employee in the execution of his duties or following the instructions given by his employer, the employer exclusively shall be entitled to exercise all economic rights in the program so created, unless otherwise provided by contract.

While paragraph 3 supports my side of the argument (since the subject at issue is software created not in the execution of duties or following instructions), paragraph 1 does seem to allow member states to drive a massive hole through my argument.

Union and center of commerce contracts are not converted into law, why would they?

Maybe not in the jurisdiction where you live, but my point from the beginning has been that you're extrapolating from that jurisdiction when you shouldn't. For example, the current "collective agreement" for consulting and market research companies (official website of the Spanish state), which applies to all companies in the sector in Spain unless there's a regional one to override it or the employee and employer have negotiated a contract which is more favourable to the employee than this one. An explanation of the system is given here (in Spanish), and the relevant primary legislation is here.

But the employer reserves the right to convert it into a project for hire...

That still doesn't make any sense to me: the economic rights in a work are transferable but the moral rights are not, and the whole point of "work for hire" is to ensure that the moral rights belong to someone other than the natural person who created the work. However, reading the EU Directive on the legal protection of software, it does seem more ambiguous than I expected:

Article 2 Authorship of computer programs

1. The author of a computer program shall be the natural person or group of natural persons who has created the program or, where the legislation of the Member State permits, the legal person designated as the rightholder by that legislation. Where collective works are recognized by the legislation of a Member State, the person considered by the legislation of the Member State to have created the work shall be deemed to be its author.

2. In respect of a computer program created by a group of natural persons jointly, the exclusive rights shall be owned jointly.

3. Where a computer program is created by an employee in the execution of his duties or following the instructions given by his employer, the employer exclusively shall be entitled to exercise all economic rights in the program so created, unless otherwise provided by contract.

While paragraph 3 supports my side of the argument (since the subject at issue is software created not in the execution of duties or following instructions), paragraph 1 does seem to allow member states to drive a massive hole through my argument.

* 33 pay days per year of work to fire an employee at will for no reason.

Where I am, we have one number for tax, one number for health care, one number for drivers license, one number for passports, and nobody uses any of them improperly. But they are all secret, and not known to anyone who doesn't need to know it.

SSN is supposed to be secure, but everyone has it and it isn't secure.

Exactly, it's the same thing in Spain. I have one DNI number (Documento Nacional de Identidad, National Identity Document), a drivers license number, and a passport number (used to be the same as my DNI, but now that I live in Japan the number has changed). Spain also has a number for tax purposes, the NIF (Número de Identificación Fiscal, Tax Identification Number), but it's just the DNI + a letter which is a function of the DNI numbers, sort of a CRC.

We don't go around telling our ID numbers to everybody (unless you're a business, then you're required to), but they aren't exactly secret either. The government itself routinely makes them available when publishing documents about student grants, lawsuits, etc, as in this one.

If you know my full name you can easily find out mine searching for "firstname lastname1 lastname2 NIF".

I'm also spanish, engineer, and I don't know what are you talking about. What law? Do you have a BOE link? Or are you talking about a "de facto law" or about your experience about some specific context?

Here's the full text of the recent amendments to the Spanish intellectual property law. It's a .pdf. Nasty stuff, I tell you...