Hate to burst your bubble but most "Sea Salt" comes from the exact same mine as your table salt. You have to understand: it *was* a sea back when the salt was deposited there, so it's not even slightly disingenuous to call it sea salt.

The only difference between sea salt and table salt is that they skip the last step of the refining process and deliver it crushed but otherwise unchanged from when they dug it out of the ground.

If they don't know how they'll do it, how do they know it'll take 40 years and 15 billion dollars?

No offense taken. But you might want to read the statute. The statute is the authoritative source.

And you should know that the 9th has a reputation as the most frequently reversed circuit. In fact, one term in the 1990s saw 27 of its 28 decisions reversed or vacated by the supreme court. This sort of BS is why.

http://blogs.findlaw.com/ninth...

I'm not familiar with UK copyright law. In the US where this case happened, it's whoever puts the work into a fixed form.

Also, you can't sign away a copyright before it exists, at least in US law. That trips up a number of people too. If you sign a contract which says, "bob is assigned all copyrights I produce under this contract" but the contract isn't for one of the nine classes of work identified by congress, bob gets nothing. That line of the contract is void. Instead you write the contract to say, "I agree to assign all copyrights I produce under this contract to bob." Now you have a contractual obligation to sign your copyrights over to bob after you create them. Bob doesn't own the copyrights until you assign them, but he owns your promise to sign them over which is functionally the same thing.

Let's be clear: the author is the person who puts the work into a fixed form. Period. There's no subtlety here, no room for confusion. The actor in a movie would not be an author even if he was in every frame and the only person captured on the film.

You go to a concert and tape it, you are the author of that tape. In fact, you have a copyright interest in that tape. As it happens, the singer already had a copyright on a previous recording which makes your tape a -derivative work-. So you can't do anything without his permission. However, the singer could not take your tape and sell it without your permission. That would violate your copyright as the author of that tape.

Are you tracking me now? The author, in whom the copyright vests by default, is the person who puts the work into a fixed form. No one else.

Better find a time machine then, 'cause personal recording technology is here to stay and your fellow citizens have a right to use it in public with or without your consent.

Very well. Then had she any copyright in the work to begin with, it would have vested in her. Unfortunately, she didn't have any copyright to anything.

At least read the circular from the copyright office with the short version of how and to whom copyright vests:

http://www.copyright.gov/circs...

"Copyright law protects a work from the time it is created in a fixed form. From the moment it is set in a print or electronic manuscript, a sound recording, a computer software program, or other such concrete medium, the copyright becomes the property of the author who created it. Only the author or those
deriving rights from the author can rightfully claim copyright."

Garcia isn't the author here. The cameraman is. He's the one who "created" the film.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

'nuff said.

Also, he's almost certainly wrong about it not being a work made for hire since work that is commissioned for use "as part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work" is one of the nine things congress explicitly calls out as a work made for hire under copyright law. So even if he wasn't already wrong about her having created a copyright in the first place, he'd still be wrong about it not being a work made for hire.

I've read the article. I've also read the statute. And the part of the constitution where it says congress alone is authorized to set intellectual property law.

Kozinski is wrong. Not about it not being a work for hire... were that relevant it might be correct. It's not relevant.

No copyright vests in the performer. Ever. It vests in whoever records the performance or in his employer if he is an employee.

Garcia could not "retain" a copyright because she never created a copyright in the first place! That was done by the cameraman!

If you read the article, you know that it didn't make any sense to the article's author either. The judge envisioned a copyright out of thin air with no supporting law. The constitution explicitly forbids judges from making commonlaw copyrights yet that's just what this joker tried to do.

A performance does not have a copyright. Only things fixed in a tangible medium can have a copyright. The film of a performance can have a copyright. But that copyright vests in (drumroll) the photographer -- the individual who fixed it into a tangible medium. Not the actor.

It's the plain language of the law man. Look it up.

The actors don't have a copyright unless rights are granted by the film maker. The script writers have a copyright (unless they're W2 employees) and the cameramen have a copyright (unless they're W2 employees) but the actors have nothing. Copyright vests in whoever puts the work into a fixed form or in their W2 employer if they are acting as an employee. There are a dozen or so exceptions but "actor" isn't one of them.