[thelist] Creating Clients

Jon Haworth jhaworth at witanjardine.co.uk
Thu Aug 23 16:23:24 CDT 2001


> This method is new to me and I find it very interesting.  I have a
question,
> however, regarding this copyright retention idea.  Would it not be
possible
> for the client to make some small change (like changing the background
color
> of all the pages from blue to green) and thus create 'new' pages which
would
> not be copyrighted by the designer?  A devious and smart client could end
up
> with a whole site for free.  Even a non-devious client might want to make
> certain more significant changes a month down the road and if he hires his
> cousin Vinny (instead of the original designer) to make those changes,
then
> at that point, the pages would certainly be new and not covered by the
> copyright.

<warning>IANAL</warning>

Depends on how the contract is set up, but I think this would be counted as
a "derivative work", and is probably covered as being something the client
wouldn't be allowed to do. Presumably the designer makes periodic checks of
the site, and if they find anything fishy going on they just lock it down
until the issue is resolved. Alternatively you could just withhold the FTP
password :-)

Cheers
Jon





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