In Anglosphere nations, the rights of creators are governed almost entirely by their contracts with investors. The US and Canada have the only (small) exceptions: US law entitles creators to terminate (most) agreements after 35 years; in Canada, rights revert automatically to heirs 25 years after the author’s death. Outside those cases, and throughout the…

‘Please go!’ said pop group Golden Earring to their music publisher Nanada when they put an end to their publishing contract! As it sometimes happens in long-standing relationships, the once harmonious author/publisher cooperation had deteriorated to such an extent that a break-up was inevitable. Unfortunately, Golden Earring’s way of going about it brought both parties…

Echos from the Dutch legal and scientific communities indicate that opinions widely diverge on the topic of the imperative character of proposed article 25 fa) of the Dutch Copyright Act in situations bearing an international dimension. As discussed in my previous blogpost, this new provision would give authors of short works of science for which…

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), the main public funding agency in the country, has been enforcing already for a few years an Open Access (OA) policy for the dissemination of the results of the research that it finances (both publications and data). The NWO does not mandate a specific form of OA: Green…