Anonymous User asked: fascinating! I didn't know that about him. his books lowkey suck btw. n he does seem like a very unpleasant person
yeah reading a summary of his bibliography it all seems like pretty mid science fiction or something. he also works for disney doing star wars novels. which, i'm generally side-eyeing anyone affiliated with disney because i also don't like them very much
to explain about disney: when i was in college we had someone come in one day to talk about graphic design. she was doing freelance work for disney because handlettered chalk stuff was in style at the time (2013) and. she was like "oh yeah, so i shouldn't really be telling you this, but if you develop any ideas while you're under contract with disney you have to keep it under wraps because their lawyers will take all your money and ruin your life" and i was sitting there horrified like what the fuck
ITS SOOOOOO FUCKED UP. everyone was still like "omg i want to go work for disney" and i was sitting there going are you guys NUTS???
YEAP.
that along with noncompete clauses are just.... so fucked up that they're super common in creative fields.
"Yeah, all your original ideas belong to us and if you leave or get fired you're not allowed to have a job for 2 years." -Statements made by the utterly deranged.
i think we need to start hunting down the contract lawyers that came up wih this bullshit
i am not a lawyer.
i have, however, had a number of lawyers tell me that noncompete clauses are usually not enforceable. so ask a lawyer, but yeah, no. they shouldn't be able to do anything even if you signed.
the steal your ideas shit, tho? corporate america is built on that shit. all of it. they can and they will.
a historical note: the United States' position on moral rights has always been at best reluctant
moral rights, as defined in the Berne convention, are
- the right to integrity (an author's work cannot be modified by another person/company without the author's explicit consent)
- the right to paternity (an author should always be able to claim authorship of a work they created)
moral rights are foundational in European copyright/droit d'auteur laws and, I suspect, one of the reasons why Europe tends to have more "auteur" culture in certain fields, since authors have a lot more power over what they make. the Berne convention happened in 1928, but the USA only joined it in 1988 under international pressure and — this is key — requesting exceptions in moral rights to shift the balance of power towards companies rather than authors.
(and yes, you're reading that right, the US only fully came on board with worldwide copyright protection in 1988. before that, non-American authors were only partially protected under copyright law in the US. the entertainment-cultural industry in the US that rules the world today was basically created by an international act of government-supported piracy.)